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<li> My experience is way out of date, but I think still indicative. I was a big drinker at Yale, especially my first and second years. I am married to a woman I fell in love with at Yale, who maybe drank a glass of wine a month, if that, while she was a student, and who couldn’t stand going to parties where people were drinking. While this did mean that we didn’t go to a lot of parties together when we were students, it didn’t stop us at all from becoming close friends and ultimately more than that.<br></li>
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<p>My best friend at Yale was part of a quad that essentially stayed together for all four years of college. One member was a serious alcoholic whose drinking negatively affected his life. One was a serious drinker and partier, but not an alcoholic, and not at all dysfunctional. One drank about once a month, but tended to go overboard when he did. And the fourth never touched alcohol at all. </p>
<p>The point is that there’s a lot more to friendships and social relations at Yale (and every similar college) than drinking or not. It’s not like high school, where there is often a kind of Manichean separation between partiers and non-partiers.</p>
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<li> That said, I think there are colleges similar to Yale, with first-rate Economics departments, where people tend to drink less: Harvard, Columbia, and Chicago, for obvious starters. People do drink plenty there (or some people do, and some don’t), but it’s less widespread because (a) they are a little less social, and (b) people tend to do more off-campus in their vibrant, sophisticated cities, and that makes it both harder and less interesting to drink intensely. Then there’s Stanford, where people drink less, but consume other mind-altering substances more, which is probably not what you are looking for.</li>
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