<p>It’s interesting that the OP links football and Greek life. That may be the case in the SEC, but it is not the case in the Big Ten. Some Big Ten schools are crazy about their football–Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan come immediately to mind, but I’d also put Wisconsin in that category these days. Oh, and Nebraska, of course. But there’s just no correlation among Big Ten schools between how football-crazed they are and the strength of Greek life. At Ohio State, for example, only 6% of undergraduate women belong to sororities, and 6% of undergraduate men belong to fraternities. Greek life in the Big Ten is strongest at Northwestern (38% of women, 32% of men) and Indiana (23% of women, 21% of men)–generally not known as big football schools.</p>
<p>Greek life is generally much stronger in the SEC, e.g., Vanderbilt (55% of women in sororities), Ole Miss (36% of women, 29% of men), Auburn (32% of women, 21% of men), Georgia (29% of women, 22% of men), though even there it’s somewhat variable.</p>
<p>Having studied and taught at several Big Ten schools, and having spent some time at all of them, I’d say each one has its own distinct personality and culture, but as a general matter I’d completely agree with the posters who say grad students at Big Ten schools are much less likely than undergrads to attend football games or other sporting events, and much less likely to be involved in Greek life. On the whole they’re a pretty serious, studious, and quiet lot. They tend to befriend people in their program, people who live in the same building or on the same block, and friends of friends. They tend not to fraternize much with undergrads. For entertainment, besides dive bars and cheap cafes, they’ll do things like a Saturday night potluck dinner with friends, and there’s no shortage on any Big Ten campus of on-campus concerts, theater performances, lectures, film series, etc., usually available at a very reasonable cost.</p>
<p>I also think the graduate student culture carries more heft at some schools than at others, reflecting the relative size of the graduate programs. Michigan, for example, has about 15,000 graduate students and 29,000 undergrads–so roughly 1 out of every 3 Michigan students is a grad student. In contrast, Alabama has a similar number of undergrads (28,000) but only 1/3 as many grad students (5,000)–so at Alabama, less than 1 in every 6 students is a grad student. That’s naturally going to make the undergraduate culture much more dominant at a place like Alabama than at Michigan. But I wouldn’t generalize conference-by-conference; this is much more a school-specific variable. </p>