Florida Universities No Longer Among the Party Elite
 

Florida Colleges Lose Top 'Party School' Rankings
Survey Ranks UW-Madison Top Party School

POSTED: 3:52 pm EDT August 22, 2005
UPDATED: 10:18 pm EDT August 22, 2005

The University of Florida and Florida State University both dropped from the Princeton Review's notorious list of "Top 10 Party Schools" for the first time since the late 1990s.

The rankings are based on thousands of student surveys that measure how much the student bodies drink, do drugs and study.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison topped the list of the nation's party schools Monday despite a decade-long effort by school officials to reduce its reputation for heavy drinking.


UW-Madison has ranked among the top party schools on the annual Princeton Review report in 13 out of the 14 years it has compiled the list and was No. 3 a year ago. University of Florida was ranked 18th out of 20 on the list. Meanwhile, Brigham Young University was tops among "stone cold sober" schools for the eighth straight year.

UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley dismissed the report as "junk science that results in a day of national media coverage." But the chairman of the campus student government said many students would take pride in the ranking considering its other reputation as a top academic institution.

U.S. News and World Report ranked UW-Madison No. 34 among national universities in its annual survey last week.

"It just shows that we work hard but we play hard also," said Eric Varney, chair of the Associated Students of Madison.

The list -- which is not affiliated with Princeton University -- is based on online surveys of more than 110,000 college students and *******d in the Princeton Review's "Best 361 Colleges."

The top party schools rankings are based on survey responses regarding alcohol and drug use, hours of study each day, and the number of students in fraternities and sororities.

Schools often put down the list, while the American Medical Association has urged Princeton Review to cease putting it out, saying it legitimizes students' drinking.

But Robert Frank, who authored the report "The Best 361 Colleges," said students are looking for more than just a classroom experience when they pick a college.

"The mission is very simple -- to provide information to make the college search palatable for a student and all of them to find a school that's the best fit for them," he said.

UW-Madison has long had a reputation for heavy drinking, ranking No. 3 this year for the amount of beer and hard liquor consumed. Still, the school touts its nine-year program to cut down on binge drinking they it says had led to a drop in students who drink to excess, fewer admissions to local detoxification centers and more freshman who say they don't drink at all.

"We're not trying to tell students that they can't drink at all, but they really do need to learn how to drink responsibly," said Susan Crawly, who heads the effort.

Still, the school's reputation has been hard to shake. It's annual spring party drew 20,000 revelers this year, while Halloween weekend has been marred by riots the last two years as thousands have descended upon the city.


Florida placed 18th on an expanded top-20 list to appear in the Review's "Best 361 Colleges" guide, while FSU fell off entirely. In 2000, FSU and Florida ranked No. 1 and 2 in the nation.

Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.

Now I'm interested in seeing the whole list of 20 or whatever.

as a side note, i think UCF made the 361 list, but i dont think i am actually going to find out where.

but im pretty sure it did

ohio university is number 2 in party schools while oberlin is number 4 in marijuana consumption.

how cool is that?

pretty cool

1. University of Wisconsin-Madison
2. Ohio University-Athens
3. Lehigh University
4. University of California-Santa Barbara
5. State University of New York at Albany
6. Indiana University-Bloomington
7. University of Mississippi
8. University of Iowa
9. University of Massachusetts-Amherst
10. Loyola University New Orleans
11. Tulane University
12. University of Georgia
13. Penn State University
14. West Virginia University
15. The University of Texas-Austin
16. University of Tennessee-Knoxville
17. University of New Hampshire
18. University of Florida
19. Louisiana State University
20. University of Maryland-College Park

1) University of Wisconsin-Madison
2) Ohio University
3) Lehigh University
4) University of California-Santa Barbara
5) State University of New York at Albany
6) Indiana University
7) University of Mississippi
8) University of Iowa
9) University of Massachusetts-Amherst
10) Loyola University-New Orleans.

Beat ya to it.

More importantly, for the eighth straight year, BYU was ranked the top Stone Cold Sober school.

And the other "honors" are:
- Toughest college to get into: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
- Most beautiful campus: Pepperdine University, Malibu, Calif.
- Best college library: Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass.
- Best college newspaper: University of Arizona, Tucson.
- Happiest students overall: Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.
- Students lean most to political left: Mills College, Oakland, Calif.
- Students lean most to political right: Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Mich.
- Friendliest race/class relations: Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, Needham, Mass.
- Most accepted gay community: New College of Florida, Sarasota.

boris the blade went there.

i visited once.

it was pretty cool

its also not nationally accredited

those lists don't mean shit. WVU would be #1 one year, off the list the next, then top ten the following year yet nothing would have changed during those three years.

I wish that was his real name. Maybe I will spawn a child so I can name him/her that.

maybe nothing changed to you.

but you arent the whole school

and maybe all the other schools started drinking a lot more one year and then stopped the next

and maybe I was just drunk and forgot entire years of my life

Man, pepperdine is an amazing campus