The link in post #56 is for a 1994 study. That’s more than twenty years ago.
@Hanna Then it seems to me her only option is a college with single dorm rooms available to freshmen. If you want to avoid “selfish” and “stupid” actions that encompasses a WHOLE lot more than sex and drinking.
Single dorm room in a hall of its own, with its own bathroom as well. Avoid drunks in the halls and vomiting… Notice no opposite gender people leaving a room in the wee hours (gee, when we overstayed the midnight curfew we, a mixed group, were all sitting around listening to Goon Show records and talking).
I remember a fire drill in the middle of the night one night. Now, I never considered us a “trashy” group. In fact, we were a group of high achieving, self-selecting special housing program freshman. But out of each and EVERY room (including the RA’s room) came one boy and one girl. (And this was a LONG time ago!)
Regarding curfews. Anything that can be done after curfew can be done before it…
The first time I drank so much I threw up was at a student party held at my school’s Newman Center (the campus Catholic ministry).
I only did it once, because it was not a pleasant experience.
My point is that “it” - whatever “it” is - truly is everywhere. There are ways to avoid that kind of behavior. There are always like-minded people to be found.
My advice to my high school senior is to remember who she is. Ultimately it is up to her how she handles those situations, but hopefully she has been raised to make choices that are smart for her and her situation.
OP how is your daughter’s HS experience?
At my daughter’s “cheap,” “trashy” public school, she got written up by an RA for: (1) talking in a normal speaking voice at 11:01 p.m. because quiet hours had started at 11:00; and (2) for using an empty wine bottle as a flower vase (her suite mate had cut flowers from her parent’s garden one weekend and wanted to bring them back to school in something disposable!) She’s obviously the worst kind of person and I can see why OP wouldn’t want her daughter rubbing shoulders with this sort of garbage. 
People who are only concerned that other students’ behavior might lessen their enjoyment of dorm living don’t sling nasty labels at them. “Selfish” and “stupid” are worlds away from “trashy.”
The assumption that people who don’t drink, have sex, or party in college = conservative which = good and people who do are presumably liberal and “trashy” is wrong. I hope your daughter doesn’t take that kind of judgmental thinking to college. Universities are full of all kinds of people. If she can only live in places where other adults live like she does, she may want to commute.
I’d like to recommend showing the OP some amount respect. She’s a concerned parent asking a question that she doesn’t realize is offensive to those of us who engage or engaged in the behaviors that she finds objectionable (like sex, drugs and rock and roll). I’m thinking like the parents in the movie Footloose.
Nonetheless, I think the bottom line advice is to trust your child and trust their upbringing.
@ClassicRockerDad -I thought we were doing pretty good. Seriously.
If the OP had just said -my conservative daughter would like a quiet dorm -I think she would have gotten tons of responses. Maybe the OP can learn how to communicate in a more considerate way. Labels can be hurtful.
I have two kids in college. My oldest D is a senior at Purdue. College is usually the first place a student lives that they have a large amount of independence and little adult supervision. In Purdue’s (and many large campuses) case it’s like a small city populated by 17-24 years olds. Some are bound to behave badly. My D lived in an Honors dorm her freshmen year and definitely saw drunk students, students who had “sleepovers”, students who damaged things, were loud, stumbled around and threw up and passed out in the bathrooms, dorm rooms and hallways. They weren’t too numerous and it wasn’t all the time but they definitely were noticeable and I think gave the impression its more ubiquitous than it really is. The sober kids, the ones who drink responsibly or who go to events or hang around with friends and go to bed before morning are more numerous but less noticeable.
My D never drank as a freshman and little as a sophomore. She was an engineering student doing a co-op and didn’t drink until she was in her first co-op rotation. In her opinion the bigger problems are with the younger students though even there I think it’s because you have much larger groups of students living in one place. She saw much less bad behavior with her junior and senior colleagues. Perhaps they drank more responsibly, perhaps it is because she lived in apartments with people who she chose to live with.
A book that I think is good for preparing a student for dorm and college life is called “The Naked Roommate (and 107 other things you might run into in college)”. Good luck.
As the decades go by I find fewer and fewer people in the world have heard of the Goons. Thank you, @wis75 … I cut my baby teeth on those records.
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What do other conservative families / parents do - - just have their kid live at home? <<
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you can’t just phrase it with a blanket question with a universal yes or no answer. each family has a unique situation with a unique set of factors that must all be taken into account.
our D19 wants to be a nurse. we have a CC 5mins away with a good ADN/RN program, and a public U 10mins away with a BSN program. financially it did not make sense to drop $40K or so on 4 years room and board. we are happy to have her at home, and she attends the university RUF group.
our S21 goes to a private 2 hours away that meets full financial need. again, it made sense for many reasons – yes, including financially – for him to go there. we just trust that he will continue to make the right life decisions living on campus that enabled him to get accepted there in the first place.
so for your D you have to look at factors like your family finances, her personality, her academic profile, and her intended major. your otherwise not-so-great local U’s might have a good program in her intended major. or if finances are tight, commuting to community college can be a cost-effective option to knock out foundational coursework for 2 years, transferring to a local or more distant public U for years 3 and 4.
on the other hand, maybe she qualifies for a good freshman scholarship that might make a residential campus a better option financially and academically. you really have to evaluate all factors – especially financial – to make the best decision. We too had some reservations about dorm life, but I don’t think you can let that be the sole or even primary deciding factor.
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Our local schools aren't that academically great - - but we are considering it, because dorm life seems so over-rated / expensive. <<
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Campus living is expensive. Only you can determine if it is worth $40K+ over 4 years for her to have that “true college experience” – whatever that means.
Dorm life is also overrated, and I say this as someone who lived 3 years in public U dorms and loved it. Because at the time (mid 80s) room & board was dirt cheap, but that’s certainly not the case anymore. We know a college freshman who could not even study in his dorm room because of the non-stop loud music from nearby rooms. Imagine investing $10K into your child’s on-campus living only to have them spend more time in the library than in their room. So much for his “true college experience.” Year 2 he got an off-campus apartment, and for years 3-4 he decided his best option was living at home and commuting. Living at home and commuting is a sensible reasonable option that isn’t automatically inferior to dorm living – and for some kids may be much better.
Remember. If it gets too bad then they can always transfer out.
There are parties at every single college campus, regardless of clout, cost, public vs. private, religious vs. non-religious, etc. Even schools that are not known to be notorious “party schools” still have plenty of parties. There is no getting around it. Once our children are 18 and off to college, the best we can do is hope they remember the values they were taught and make the right choices and decisions. Some will, many won’t. Some will steer clear of the party scene, some will experiment from time to time, while others will find that they (unfortunately) love the party scene and will partake in it more than they should.
We raise our children with certain values in hopes that they carry those into their adulthood. They will make mistakes, just as we did. Hopefully they will learn. The best we can do is make sure our children feel they can talk to us when they make mistakes. Open lines of communication is key. .
Nobody ever said letting go would be easy…
OP:
I have a lot of different thoughts about your questions. Here they are in no particular order:
- Public university does not always = high level of RISKY ("trashy") behavior in the dorms. Nor does a private university = lower level of risky behavior.
- If it's financially feasible, every college student should have an opportunity to live on campus in the dorms for a year. It's a really good bridge between high school/childhood and full adulthood.
- Most universities (public and private) have honors dorms. A lot of them also have LLCs (Living Learning Communities) for various special interests: LGBT, Science/Engineering, Sober/Quiet dorm, Leadership, etc., etc.
- Regardless of where your DD attends college, make sure before she begins college that you've taught her some good common sense and street smarts. About everything. Parties, going out with friends, drinking, drug use, STDs, methods of safe sex, etc. You should do this EVEN IF your family's beliefs/values are that DD shouldn't do any of that until she gets married. Knowledge = power. Knowledge = your DD will have the right info so she can make informed adult decisions.
- Attending a party school does not necessarily = your DD will turn into a partier, too. Case in point: I attended 1 of the biggest party schools in the whole country back in the day. One of my best buddies in the dorms were 2 girls who lived just next door to me. Both were (and still are) Evangelical Christians. You know what they did every Friday and Saturday night? Attended the campus Christian fellowship meetings & worship sessions on Friday nights. And then went to Christian student group parties on Saturday nights. They didn't drink, didn't do drugs. They never felt like they were missing out even though there were ample opportunities for them to go to frat parties and stuff like that.
- You could send your DD to a very conservative college. They are out there. Some are really really conservative and have dress codes for female students and other student conduct rules which state things like you'll be expelled if you're caught drinking or having sex on campus.
- BUT sending your child to a college like that is no guarantee that she won't end up drinking or having sex. Where there's a will, there's a way.
- Your DD will most definitely end up making some stupid decisions in her college life. Every student does.
- when your DD fills out the dorm application, she needs to answer the questions truthfully and honestly. Let her do it on her own and don't look over her shoulder while she fills it out. There are lots of posts in the College Life section this past fall about roommates who did stuff like said they were morning people, but they're really night owls. or said that they aren't into drinking, got paired with a sober student, but then the kid ends up drunk almost every night and it turns out that the kid answered the questions a certain way because Mom was pressuring him to sign up for the Sober Living LLC dorm.
- It is FAR easier to make friends freshman year if you're living on campus in a dorm. You CAN make friends living at home with your parents...you just have to put a lot more effort into it.
- If you do choose to have your DD live at home while attending college, get used to her never being at home except to sleep.
Good luck on your decision making process!
Is anyone here prepared to argue that doing 10 jello shots and then vomiting all over a shared space is neither selfish nor stupid?
Remember, “frequent” is not the opposite of either selfish or stupid.
“People who are only concerned that other students’ behavior might lessen their enjoyment of dorm living don’t sling nasty labels at them.”
Why don’t you help me understand what my other motivations are? I’m the one who used those words.
OP, I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but you need to be realistic. Whatever conservative/Christian bubble you raised your daughter in won’t be present on most college campuses. This goes beyond your concerns of sex and drinking. It also applies to diet, exercise, sleep, study habits, choice of friends - every aspect of life. Yes, campus life is a bubble itself and not “real life”, but it is a huge step away from home life.
It sounds like you don’t trust your daughter to make the right choices, and so you want to try to control her environment. At some point though, unless you plan to control her entire life, you will need to let her make her own choices, which are not all going to be to your liking. But the goal is to raise an independent adult who embraces life and learns from mistakes, not a robot raised in a bubble.
@Hanna, I was referring to the OP and her use of the word “trashy.” I think you’re being generous in thinking that she may have used it to mean “selfish” and “stupid.” I didn’t really get that from her post. She did mention kids drinking, partying, and having sex, but I didn’t interpret that to mean wild partying. Maybe OP can clarify what she’s looking for in a school. If she just wants to avoid out of control partying that’s different than wanting no partying at all.