D22 is somewhat of a rare case. Her motto is to work hard and party harder. We recently began to double down on the college search and she can’t seem to find a good match academically and socially. PLEASE HELP!
GPA U.W.: 4.0
(Projected ACT): 33-36
Engineering Major
4 Junior Year APS (max)
Decent ECs 200+ Volunteering hours
Varsity Athlete
No financial aid needed.
Thank you!
The school that she is seeking may be Duke University.
Certainly, Dartmouth College should be considered as it has excellent academics combined with a the highest rating for social life (party school equivalent of 5 telephones) by the Fiske Guide To Colleges 2020 edition.
Penn State University is another school that meets your daughter’s style.
University of Florida is another option to consider.
The University of Colorado at Boulder is another school to consider.
Schools in central/eastern Pennsylvania such as Bucknell University, Lafayette College, and Lehigh University.
Michigan is also a good school to consider with an excellent engineering program and good social life.
The University of Michigan is not in the same league for “hard partying” as are the schools that I listed above in my first post in this thread.
Lafayette College in Pennsylvania has a very active party culture. Lehigh University is or was similar–although the administration has been cracking down on the hard party culture so things are changing.
I think Work Hard Party Harder is Vandy’s unofficial motto. Your daughter should check it out.
Vanderbilt & SMU offer students the option of an active & vibrant social life.
I have D18 at Michigan and she lives with 4 female roommates. Their motto is “work harder and that’s often not enough so work even harder.”
Whose got time for parties?
That is my 19 year old, she ended up at UDel in honors, same stats as your daughter, received $17,000 a year. She was worried about honors being boring, I was worried about the parties and the daging. Her friends take school very seriously, all make the deans list, but have a tremendous amount of fun (they are also in sororities). She is the most visited out of all of her high school friends.
For more safeties, I would recommend Wisconsin, Depauw, UIUC, and UMass, Indiana, and MSU.
For matches/reaches, there are Tulane and UT Austin.
Duke has been her first choice so far; sent her down for a weekend (pre-covid) and sat in on a few classes…found herself at many parties. Our only pause would be would she get accepted? She would ED, but its pretty selective
Seconding University of Colorado at Boulder. If she is competitive for Duke then consider Penn, “the social ivy.”
Schools with well known academia & social opprotunities:
West Coast: UCLA
UC Santa Barbara
San Diego State University
University of Washington
University of Oregon
University of Colorado - Boulder
East Coast: Penn State
Syracuse University
UNC - Chapel Hill
North Carolina State University
University of Florida
University of Vriginia
University of Maryland
UPenn
Rutgers University
Georgia Tech
Middle USA: UT Austin
Louisiana State University
University of Michigan
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Purdue University
Disagree with University of Washington. UW is a very serious school NOT known for partying.
Purdue is also not a big party school either, especially for the engineers.
That said, she’ll find parties at all the big flagships and plenty to do.
Maybe at OSU (Ohio) for a match.
A hard studying, hard partying engineering school? Wisconsin would be clearly on the top of that list.
I am not sure that I would recommend that a daughter attend a “hard partying” school.
I have heard that “work hard and party hard” is a description of McGill. However, the partying dies down quite a bit when the school work begins. The fact that the drinking age is 18 in Montreal is alleged to pull most of the hard partying out of the dorms into the bars and pubs, which has some significant advantages.
Any of the Patriot League schools.
maybe sewanee for a safety? i have heard they have a work hard play hard vibe.
More info needed. Location preferences? School size?
Maybe Wake Forest AKA Work Forest. Beautiful campus and known as a work hard, play hard school. Also UNC and NC State if she likes the Raleigh area. Not sure but UNC might have limited engineering majors if I remember correctly. Georgia Tech, UF, UT, Texas A&M, VT, Clemson and Auburn would fit the bill.
What about one of the US service academies? The epitome if work hard, play hard.
Vandy has ED2 if she’s deferred from Duke.