Syracuse University ranked No. 10 of top 20 party schools

For the second year in a row, Syracuse University has kept its place among The Princeton Review’s top 20 party schools list, and it has even moved up a couple notches from last year’s 12th place. This year, Syracuse is No. 10.

The list is prepared every year by The Princeton Review and will be one of 62 rankings in the 2013 edition of The Best 377 Colleges, which goes on sale Tuesday. Already, the list has been making the rounds online, provoking varied reactions from SU supporters.

“I was surprised. It’s very interesting, and it’s totally unexpected,” said Katie Neer, a second-year law student. She added that SUNY Albany, where she studied as an undergraduate, had also been ranked on a similar list of party schools when she was a freshman.

Neer said she thought that SU’s place on the list may be due in large part to the undergraduates’ partying. “I think that’s much more of the undergrad population, and it’s totally understandable because we have a great athletic program,” she said.

History senior  Max Lewis said he also found SU’s ranking to be unexpected.

“I was pretty surprised, but it’s actually not surprising at the same time. It’s just surprising that someone else recognized it,” Lewis said. “We have a pretty laid-back attitude in general in the student body."

Lewis said that while he was surprised to see SU on the list, its place at No. 10 seemed right.

“It’s not so high that it doesn’t seem like we don’t care about academics at all, but we’re on the list,” he said.

The Princeton Review determines its rankings by crunching data from surveys sent out to college students across the country. According to the Princeton Review website, the list of party schools is determined by students’ responses to questions concerning the use of alcohol and drugs, the number of hours they study outside of class and the popularity of fraternities and sororities at their schools.

SU rose to No. 10 from its No. 12  place last year, pulling ahead of Penn State, University of Mississippi and University of Texas in Austin, which were all ranked above SU last year.

In 2010, 2009, and 2008, Syracuse did not make the top party school list.

Neer said she worried a little about SU’s place on the party school list. “No one wants to have a degree from a school that is known as a party school,” she said. “But, on the other hand, Syracuse has a great reputation, especially for its graduate programs.”

On Twitter, the comments were mixed. “yuk,” tweeted Public Diplomacy Program Director Dennis F. Kinsey (@HondoMesa) with a link to list, while alumna Jess Infante (@jess1219) wrote, “It's things like this that make all that debt worth it.” Others, such as Newhouse graduate student D. Sean Walker (@RealDSean), were mostly concerned about the competition: “No. 10?! And losing to ... West Virginia?!!!! What kind of parties do they throw in that Cowtown? #CouchBurningParty”

In this year’s rankings, SU was also named No. 9 on the “Lots of Hard Liquor” list, No. 14 on “Lots of Greek Life” and No. 17 on the “Lots of Beer” list. In addition, SU took No. 17 on the “Jock Schools” list, No. 13 of the “Best College Newspaper” list and No. 4 of the “2011 Top Entrepreneurial Programs: Undergraduate” list.

Below is the complete list of The Princeton Review’s top 20 party schools of 2011-2012.

PARTY SCHOOLS

1. West Virginia University, Morgantown

2. University of Iowa, Iowa City

3. Ohio University, Athens

4. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

5. University of Georgia, Athens

6. University of Florida, Gainesville

7. University of California-Santa Barbara

8. Florida State University, Tallahassee

9. Miami University of Ohio, Oxford

10. Syracuse University

11. Penn State University, University Park, Pa.

12. DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind.

13. University of Wisconsin-Madison

14. University of Mississippi

15. University of Texas-Austin

16. University of Maryland, College Park

17. University of South Carolina, Columbia

18. James Madison University, Harrisonburg Va.

19. University of Maine, Orono

20. University of Tennessee, Knoxville