<p>here’s my low-down on U of C social life</p>
<p>There are basically 4 main party scenes on any given weekend at UChicago:</p>
<p>1) Dorm Parties
2) Apartment parties
3) Fraternity Parties
4) Partying/clubbing downtown</p>
<p>Dorm parties are usually pretty lame and should be avoided except to get free beer on your way out of the bldg and coming back to your room.</p>
<p>Apartment parties are usually your best bet for cool partying. These are often hosted by twenty-something grad students or cool hipsters mostly comprising the music/fashion/arts/Grey City crowd. There’s always pot, beer, hard alcohol and great music. The downside is that you have to be hooked-in with this crowd to know about these shindigs and most undergrads, esp. underclassmen, will never make it to one of these. When I was DJ’ing at WHPK, we always had fun-as-hell parties that would go on until daylight and then we’d drive downtown to grab pancakes before crashing. Fun times. One of the guys in the group was also a DJ at WHPK and at a club downtown. He ended up producing crap with Jay Z and is a massively rich producer now. So these parties are really fun to go to but you gotta know the people first.</p>
<p>Fraternity parties are hit or miss. My old fraternity, Psi-U, had some awesome parties with packed dance floors, dead cats in the kitchen and drunk, bottomless football players dancing with only their jerseys covering their shmeckels. And remember, out of a student body of 4,000, you will always find a fair number of pretty gorgeous women (and men, I suppose…) simply due to the numbers game. One of the regulars at my fraternity was a Ms. America runner-up and she was just one of many really cute gals there. The music was great and the guys were absolutely insane in a good way. Half of them are doctors now, which is actually pretty scary to think about…</p>
<p>And for those willing to make the trek downtown, the club scene in Chicago is incredibly vibrant, trailing only NYC and LA for late-nite dancing and boozing possibilities.</p>