<p>I think the biggest problem with this discussion is that no one’s tried to define what exactly people mean when they ask if Hopkins is a “party school”. To me, a party school is a school where people do nothing but party, the only way to have fun on the weekends is to party, academics are generally considered a joke, and the degrees gained from these institutions aren’t given much weight. If this is your definition of a party school, Hopkins is not a party school by any stretch of the imagination. We’re academically rigorous, well-known as a research/intellectual school, and people do way more than go to frats on the weekend. My friends and I have been to two frat parties our first year here, both times because it was combined with a cast party for a friend’s acting troupe. Most weekends we’re hanging out with friends in our extracurriculars (like the aforementioned theatre friend), hopping on a train to spend a weekend in D.C./NYC, or getting together for a movie night. Yes, there are people that party, and there are multiple parties every weekend, but this is true at every single college you will ever attend. BlueJayBJ makes a good point about parties at MIT being worse than parties at ASU, and knowing a lot of friends at top schools I can safely say that if you want to attend an institution with no parties that is just not going to happen. If you consider Hopkins a “party school” because parties exist on campus, you’re throwing a lot of schools in this category because practically every university will have parties occurring there. However, at Hopkins no one’s going to force you to go to these parties. Only 25% of Hopkins students are members of Greek life, which leaves 75% of the school not having to go to these parties if they don’t want to. Like much of Hopkins, parties are as important as you want them to be- you can go to three parties a weekend and be completely hungover for class on Monday, you can go to a party on Friday night to relax after a week of school, or you can go to no parties at all and still find plenty of friends to do things with. I don’t party and I don’t drink, but that doesn’t mean my social life here is terrible. Far from it. You’ll find a group to hang with on the weekends, trust me.</p>