UO in top 20 — for parties

Published 5:00 pm Monday, August 4, 2014

The University of Oregon lost out to an Atlantic Coast Conference school? Really?

When it comes to claiming the title of the nation’s top party school, the UO didn’t come close. The No. 1 ranking belongs to Syracuse University, as revealed Monday by The Princeton Review based on a nationwide survey of 130,000 students at 379 colleges .

The UO was 19th on the list of top 20 party schools — the only Pac-12 school to make the list, but far behind Syracuse.

The Princeton Review also ranked the UO seventh for “Reefer Madness,” 16th for “Students Pack the Stadiums” and 17th for “Best Health Services.”

The highest-ranked Pac-12 school on the “Reefer Madness” list was the University of Colorado — in a state where recreational marijuana consumption is now legal. It ranked No. 4.

Elsewhere in the Northwest, The Evergreen State College in Olympia ranked third in the “Reefer Madness” category; Lewis & Clark College in Portland ranked 15th; and Reed College, also in Portland, ranked 17th.

But Reed also claimed a No. 1 ranking truly worth bragging about: It topped the list of schools with the best professors.

Despite Autzen Stadium’s claim to 96 consecutive sellouts, the UO’s 16th-place ranking for “Students Pack the Stadiums” is only third-best in the Pac-12, trailing Arizona (fifth) and USC (eighth).

The UO’s 17th-place ranking for “Best Health Services” also trailed two other Pac-12 schools: Arizona ranked sixth and UCLA seventh.

Stanford, meanwhile, claimed its own bragging rights: The Pac-12 rival ranked No. 1 in the country for being lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender-friendly, and No. 4 for “Best College Library.”

For better and for worse, Oregon State University did not rank in the top 20 in any category.

Syracuse somehow managed to claim top party school status despite only an 18th-place ranking in “Reefer Madness” — buoyed undoubtedly by its rankings of No. 2 for “Lots of Hard Liquor” and No. 4 for “Lots of Beer.”

Syracuse officials were not thrilled by their school’s showing in the 2015 edition of “The Best 379 Colleges.”

The book contains 62 “top 20” lists gauging student satisfaction with professors, financial aid awards, athletic facilities, food and other topics.

“We do not aspire to be a party school,” Syracuse said in a statement, citing its “long-established reputation for academic excellence with programs that are recognized nationally and internationally as the best in their fields.”

Rounding out the top five party schools were: the University of Iowa (last year’s winner), the University of California-Santa Barbara, West Virginia University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Repeating at the top of the “stone-cold sober” schools was Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

Syracuse’s central New York neighbor, Colgate University, topped the list of most beautiful campuses. The University of Chicago was found to have the best college library, and students voted Virginia Tech’s dining hall offerings as the best campus food.

Other No. 1 spots: Elon University in North Carolina as best-run college; Washington University in St. Louis for its dorms; and Yale University for best newspaper.

“Our purpose is not to crown one college ‘best’ overall or to rank these distinctive schools 1 to 379 on any single topic,” Princeton Review senior vice president Robert Franek said. “We present our 62 ranking lists to give applicants the broader base of campus feedback to choose the college that’s best for them.”

Northeastern University in Boston took the No. 1 spot on the list of best career services, and the happiest students were found at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, according to the rankings.

An average of 343 students per campus were asked 80 questions about their schools and themselves during the 2013-14 and/or previous two school years. With no affiliation to Princeton University, the Princeton Review, based in Natick, Mass., has published “The Best 379 Colleges” since 1992.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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