UD party scene ranked high on Princeton Review

The Princeton Review came out with its rankings, and as it should be, UD was on top. Surprise, surprise we were ranked highly in the party categories, highlighting Delaware’s ever increasing issue of underage drinking. We scored #9 in the Greek Life Category, #12 in Party Schools, and #15 in a category referred to as “Lots of Beer.” We were ranked along with 380 other Northeastern Colleges. There is no doubt that all three of these categories are linked. Having a lot of Greek Life means having a lot of frats. The frats have the parties and supply the beer. Bing, bang, boom.

At first glance, this is awesome. I mean, Delaware knows how to throw down there’s no question about that. But then I started thinking about possible repercussions from earning such a ranking. Does this mean that Delaware’s academic ranking is going downhill? Are employers going to see that I went to UD and just assume that all I did was drink and participate in some sort of I’m Shmacked riot down Main Street?

When I applied to the University of Delaware I did so on the notion that it was widely regarded as a good school, had competitive academics, with a decent reputation. Of course I knew about the frat parties and the underage drinking but it didn’t dominate my overall impression of the school. All colleges have some sort of party culture, though it may pail in comparison to Delaware’s.

I looked at the rest of the Princeton Review’s statistics and was happily surprised. Delaware had a reported number of 24,881 applicants, of which 63% were accepted with an average high school GPA of 3.70. To go even further, 50% of the applicants admitted had a GPA of over 3.75. Those statistics speak for themselves.

So cheers to us, UD. We’ve proved that we can successfully hit the books just as hard as we hit the kegs.