I think for some time lacrosse was a wealthy school sport. So entitled rich boys were common. The sport is gaining popularity, so maybe some of that will fall away. And I expect a kid who doesn’t like lax bros won’t like entitled athletes of any type (and maybe would not be be keen on frat life, either). I expect you might find a few at almost any school (hence the Oberlin sighting mentioned above), but I still think they are rarer at a school like Oberlin than at many other schools.
You’re going to find lax bros and other similar types at places like Macalester, Carleton, Swarthmore, Haverford and similar schools. They just likely won’t dominate the culture and they will be smart.
Hockey bros can be just as obnoxious or more so IMO. You’re more likely to encounter them in the midwest than lax bros so don’t think schools in the midwest are safe from the type.
Besides the University of Denver, which won the men’s NCAA lax championship a few years ago, which university was the western-most men’s lax champion?
Answer: UVA in Charlottesville, VA
AFAIK, no direct index exists for the extent or intensity of Lax Bro presence on college campuses.
Each school’s Common Data Set, section F1, does show the percentage of men who join fraternities (which may correlate very roughly with the kind of culture you want to avoid).
US News has the following list of schools with the most students in fraternities:
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/most-frats
If the Lax Bro really is the specific type you want to avoid (not jocks in general, or towel-snapping frat boys) then you might want to red-line certain regions. Maryland seems to be the ancestral homeland. However, the culture has spread throughout the Mid-Atlantic, the Southeast, and apparently a few pockets elsewhere (such as the Colorado Front Range).
To minimize contact with related male cultural types, your safest bets probably include women’s colleges (especially), hippie colleges (like Warren Wilson), schools with a strong Social Justice Warrior element (like Oberlin), and most selective colleges with a reputation for intense intellectual atmospheres (such as Reed, UChicago, or Carleton).
A high rate of alumni-earned PhDs per capita may be a fairly good counter-indicator.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/most-frats
I’ve lived on the east coast all my life. Never knew lax was an east-coast thing. Why is that?
Interesting that one can generalize and disparage a group based simply on participation in a sport and that others on this site would participate and offer advice. I wonder why this is an acceptable “demographic” to denigrate without backlash. Is it because this group is stereotyped as being made up of privileged white males? What if the targeted group were “hippie-chicks” or “social justice warriors” or “safe spacers”. How would those threads be received?
Hahaha! I love this post! Wish there was a LOL button:-)
More power to your D, OP. My D, at Bates (which does have some lax bros), is also anti-lax bro, but not so much that it was a criteria in selection. My son, sorry to say, is a lax bro. He wants colleges where he might find other lax bros. So I can offer suggestions of where to avoid. Have a look at this pretty comprehensive list: https://www.jrminutemenlax.net/page/show/222086-listing-of-colleges-with-mens-lacrosse
I live in northern VA and lacrosse is huge here. I think it’s spill over from MD where it’s been popular for years (back to local indigenous tribes). It’s definitely the sport of choice for the well off, white preppies in this area.
@tk21769 very funny and true. I live in the heart of the ancestral home. :))
We learn something everyday here on College Confidential
I don’t blame her. The obvious answer is to choose a school without an NCAA lacrosse team. I don’t think the lax bros would choose a college that has lacrosse as a club or intramural sport only. One such non-lacrosse school that comes to mind is University of Wisconsin and all its directionals, including Wisconsin-La Crosse (hehe). But previous posters are right: you’ll find bro culture of one type or another wherever there are men.
My kid is not at all athletic, but goes to a public HS with a very good boys lax team. There definitely is a “lax bro” culture, but according to my son at least, most of the lacrosse players are pretty nice. It’s the “theater kids” who are mean. Kind of the opposite of what you might expect.
And those acapella kids, . . . . 
Fair questions.
Note that the OP’s very first words were,
“No offense to any lax bros, lax players, schools with great lacrosse teams, people who carry lacrosse sticks, or…whatever else makes a lax bro a lax bro.”
Apparently s/he (and some of the responders) are struggling to understand just what the term even means.
I grew up in a mid-Atlantic area where lacrosse has been big for decades, before the term “Lax Bro” was popular (or maybe even coined). Lacrosse has been called “the fastest sport on two feet”. Native Americans played it to train for war. It is an intense collision sport in which concussions apparently are the most common above-waist injury. It may be perceived (fairly or unfairly) to attract a certain kind of young man that the OP’s daughter (rightly or wrongly) would prefer to avoid. That wouldn’t be quite the same as wanting to avoid African Americans or Asians or people with any other characteristics they were born with. It’s more like wanting to avoid “party schools”, commuter schools, intensely intellectual/nerdy schools, or overly pre-professional schools. Unfortunately the term Lax Bro is a little more personal and specific than any of those types, so it’s understandable that some people might take offense.
The “lax bro” isn’t any different from any other bro. In general, avoid frat-dominated schools and it won’t be a big problem.
Circling back to say – if the goal is “minimal to no” lax bros culture then – strip out schools with greek life presence or underground greek life, or recently banned greek life (such as Amherst, which has banned participation in the underground frats). High percentage of student body participating in Varsity sports, as often found at highly selective LACs, could suggest higher “risk” of bro culture.
Schools without greek life and with minimal “bros” culture would include Haverford, Grinnell, Oberlin (despite my kid’s aversion to the “flow” sighted at Grinnell). Women’s colleges, including Bryn Mawr, Mt Holyoke, Agnes Scott etc. would work.
At larger schools, the presence of bro culture would be muted by the sheer diversity of types of students so should be more easily avoided though it would exist.
“I’ve lived on the east coast all my life. Never knew lax was an east-coast thing. Why is that?”
Lacrosse was a sport that originated with northeastern Native Americans. Why (other than it is a cool sport) and how it got picked up by the boarding/private schools, I’m not really sure but it did and has been expanding elsewhere over the past 20 years.
Lax is pretty strong in the SF Bay Area suburbs. @Itisatruth, PM’d you.
Of course, the percentage of students participating in varsity sports is inversely correlated to the size of the school. A given set of varsity sports teams has a similar number of athletes at any school, but that number of athletes is a large percentage of a small school but a small percentage of a large school.
This seems like an opportunity to educate and spread a positive message rather than perpetuate stereotypes. Here are three examples of lacrosse-centric social programs/organizations that I have had personal experience with. Quite a bit of good is done as a result of and in honor of the Creator’s Game.
https://www.harlemlacrosse.org/