We’ve talked before about finding the best college “fit” for your child – Big school? Small school? Urban? Rural? More or less selective? But there’s another crucial component to the hunt for the best institution of higher education for them: What sort of social life do they want?
It may sound trivial at first blush. Surely the classroom matters more! Or the price! But if your young adult is off to a four-year residential school, they’re going to want to find a place where what happens away from the books and study groups is to their liking.
In 1987, when I was applying, that mostly meant “Greek life,” aka fraternities and sororities, and determining whether a place was a “party school” or not. In 2025, it’s a considerably more complex tapestry, and you’ll want to help your child pull on the threads.
Bottom line: Social life at college can include everything from the aforementioned fraternities to affinity groups (e.g. the Taiwanese American Students Association) to various clubs (academic, athletic, religious, service, etc.) that host get-togethers on or off campus to the local bar and restaurant scene.
“Where Do You Hang Out?”
These are the best tools for figuring out what a school’s social life is like: the campus tour, the campus newspaper and students already attending the institution – notably on social media.
Anecdotally, one of the most useful questions I have encouraged applicants to ask their guides has been, “Where do you hang out?” You can also ask, “How big is Greek life here?” Or, “What did you do last Friday night?” Not every tour sets aside a lot of time for a school’s social life, so make sure to pipe up.
The campus newspaper may have pieces on everything from fraternities to relations between a school and the local community – “town and gown” – and should be much more unvarnished in their descriptions.
Best are students, whose takes will likely be franker than a tour guide’s and more expansive than the newspaper’s. Friends of the family and recent graduates of your child’s high school are probably the most approachable, but students on campus are often friendly and flattered that you want their opinion.
And you can of course hit up the Google machine with “is ____ a party school?”
Fun fact about me: I fell in love with my alma mater in part because it was the only school where my host made no effort to get me drunk. Having grown up in a college town packed with fraternities, it was a nice change of pace.
Let’s explore the options.
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Greek Life
At many schools, fraternities and sororities have receded. In the small college town where I graduated from high school and, yes, went to fraternity parties, they went from dominating weekend life to vanishing over several decades. Some schools have zero “Greek life.” (I don’t like the silly expression, so I put it in quotes.)
But that’s not true everywhere. Not at all. U.S. News has compiled lists of colleges with the highest percentage of students in fraternities (Washington & Lee, with 72%) and in sororities (Welch College, with 83%), and there are many more with percentages well above half of the student body.
One thing to understand is that the nature of fraternities and sororities often varies across schools. At my alma mater, the co-ed frat I joined did not put a huge emphasis on the “Greek”-ness of it all. And while one of our neighboring fraternities was very traditional, another was the “literary” fraternity that essentially functioned as a book club with beer.
Bars and Restaurants
On the other hand, my school was in a big city, and with a few bucks in your pocket, you could go to a neighborhood restaurant or bar (ID enforcement was a touch haphazard) or go see a band.
That’s not an option everywhere, of course. But if your applicant wants to go where $20 buys them excellent Chinese, Cuban or Japanese food, that’s something to consider.
Clubs
Have a look at the college’s webpage on student-led organizations. They come in all shapes and sizes. Pick-up soccer? The “International House”? A cappella singing?
Make sure to ask on the tour if students ever have trouble joining any of the activities. At some schools, pre-professional groups (pre-law, pre-med) are oversubscribed.
On the other hand, the clubs don’t have to be ones your student will join to have them impart important information about the campus. One thing that sold my son on his school: a dance club specifically for people who don’t know how to dance.
He didn’t join. But his takeaway was that the students might take their studies seriously – but not themselves.
Olivier Knox is the son of college professors and worked in admissions as a student at his dream school. He has a 100% success rate guiding the next generation of applicants into their first-choice colleges (sample size: one son). Reach Olivier at oknox@usnews.com.
