Social Life at Princeton

michellel
Sun, 14 Apr 2013 19:13:05 +0000

I’m also a potential Class of 2017 Princeton admit, and I just came back from the Princeton Preview. I think you have absolutely nothing to be worried about. I closely identify with what you’re looking for in terms of a social life, and I think that’s trivial to find at Princeton.

For starters, the Eating Clubs don’t just consist of athletes and members of the Greek system (which is really small). I think around 70% of students join one of the 11 eating clubs. 5 of these clubs you simply sign into, so they aren’t exclusive. There are one or two houses known for attracting the athlete or sorority girl types, but I don’t think those look bad either. All clubs seem pretty diverse, but often they attract a certain type of student (for instance one has a lot of engineers, which shows that there’s a club for everyone). If you don’t want to join a club at all, you’d still have plenty of opportunities to party on the Street as an underclassman and upperclassman. At the Preview, I attended an panel on eating clubs where a bunch of students with varying involvement with the eating clubs answered questions. All of them had partied at eating clubs at some point, some a lot more than others, but purely by their own choice. If you don’t belong to the clubs, you do have to get passes to eat there (you have to ask a club member for a pass), but this is an easy process since club members seem to hand out passes freely.

As for your other question, I saw some really strong friend groups there. I was hosted by a sophomore girl living in a quad with three other good friends. Two of these girls had been paired together freshmen year, and wanted to continue living together, adding two others to their group too. They were incredibly good friends and some of them will also share upperclassmen housing next year.