Anonymous
03/05/2026 18:47
Subject: Most fun T25 private
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I know freshman boys struggling a little with the frat stuff at Duke, UChicago, Vandy and Georgetown. either going through the process and just being bogged down by pledge bullshit and academics suffering. or deciding to skip it and feeling out of the loop.
I know freshman at Yale and ND who are super happy.
also happy kids at Williams, Dartmouth, and Bowdoin. I think those are real "fit" schools, you have to know who you are before signing up of those. ND too.
Georgetown doesn't have a greek system -
I think a lot of kids and parents listen to the school presentation on greek life and few ask the actual students. there are a lot of "unassociated houses" at Georgetown with all the rushing and pledging as frats. it's more of a thing than people realize
I work at Georgetown with a lot of young alumni (and interact with the alumni community), and I have never heard a single reference to Greek life—to being a member of a house or to Greek life’s existence at the school. I also see no evidence of it walking around campus, in the student newspapers, etc.
To the extent that it’s a thing, it’s not a thing like it is at schools with formally recognized Greek systems, where Greek identity is very obvious.
Jesuits don’t do Greek.
Many smaller or more traditional Jesuit institutions do not have Greek life, substituting it with community-focused service organizations or, as in the case of Notre Dame (though not technically Jesuit, it follows a similar model), a strong, residential, hall-based social system.
The core Jesuit focus on service and community means that even where fraternities exist, they may differ from typical, high-intensity, or exclusive, national, stereotype-driven Greek systems.
Georgetown doesn’t have any sanctioned frats/sororities.
I know multiple kids in Greek houses.
Anonymous
03/05/2026 18:42
Subject: Most fun T25 private
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I know freshman boys struggling a little with the frat stuff at Duke, UChicago, Vandy and Georgetown. either going through the process and just being bogged down by pledge bullshit and academics suffering. or deciding to skip it and feeling out of the loop.
I know freshman at Yale and ND who are super happy.
also happy kids at Williams, Dartmouth, and Bowdoin. I think those are real "fit" schools, you have to know who you are before signing up of those. ND too.
Georgetown doesn't have a greek system -
I think a lot of kids and parents listen to the school presentation on greek life and few ask the actual students. there are a lot of "unassociated houses" at Georgetown with all the rushing and pledging as frats. it's more of a thing than people realize
I work at Georgetown with a lot of young alumni (and interact with the alumni community), and I have never heard a single reference to Greek life—to being a member of a house or to Greek life’s existence at the school. I also see no evidence of it walking around campus, in the student newspapers, etc.
To the extent that it’s a thing, it’s not a thing like it is at schools with formally recognized Greek systems, where Greek identity is very obvious.
Jesuits don’t do Greek.
Many smaller or more traditional Jesuit institutions do not have Greek life, substituting it with community-focused service organizations or, as in the case of Notre Dame (though not technically Jesuit, it follows a similar model), a strong, residential, hall-based social system.
The core Jesuit focus on service and community means that even where fraternities exist, they may differ from typical, high-intensity, or exclusive, national, stereotype-driven Greek systems.
Georgetown doesn’t have any sanctioned frats/sororities.
Anonymous
03/05/2026 18:40
Subject: Most fun T25 private
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I know freshman boys struggling a little with the frat stuff at Duke, UChicago, Vandy and Georgetown. either going through the process and just being bogged down by pledge bullshit and academics suffering. or deciding to skip it and feeling out of the loop.
I know freshman at Yale and ND who are super happy.
also happy kids at Williams, Dartmouth, and Bowdoin. I think those are real "fit" schools, you have to know who you are before signing up of those. ND too.
Georgetown doesn't have a greek system -
I think a lot of kids and parents listen to the school presentation on greek life and few ask the actual students. there are a lot of "unassociated houses" at Georgetown with all the rushing and pledging as frats. it's more of a thing than people realize
I work at Georgetown with a lot of young alumni (and interact with the alumni community), and I have never heard a single reference to Greek life—to being a member of a house or to Greek life’s existence at the school. I also see no evidence of it walking around campus, in the student newspapers, etc.
To the extent that it’s a thing, it’s not a thing like it is at schools with formally recognized Greek systems, where Greek identity is very obvious.
Jesuits don’t do Greek.
Anonymous
03/05/2026 18:39
Subject: Most fun T25 private
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:For the wealthy, this thread makes sense.
No, not all wealthy people think this way.
Wealthy & ignorant, maybe
I think it's super helpful personally for those of us with social extroverted kids who want to go out, not the library or a dorm room, to play video games 3+ nights a week. When you do so many of these tours, it looks so dour and unappealing. It's helpful to get information from unbiased sources.
But I generally really appreciate the anecdotal threads here focused on social climate and campus culture. You may not. It's okay. It doesn't make us "ignorant".
Anonymous
03/05/2026 18:36
Subject: Most fun T25 private
Anonymous wrote:And expanding the list to T30 because my California kid had the time of his life at UVA. Now living his best NYC life with a great social circle.
I'd assume the point of the private in the title was for size of school.
Anonymous
03/05/2026 18:35
Subject: Most fun T25 private
Anonymous wrote:For the wealthy, this thread makes sense.
No, not all wealthy people think this way.
Wealthy & ignorant, maybe
Anonymous
03/05/2026 18:33
Subject: Most fun T25 private
And expanding the list to T30 because my California kid had the time of his life at UVA. Now living his best NYC life with a great social circle.
Anonymous
03/05/2026 18:32
Subject: Most fun T25 private
Anonymous wrote:For the wealthy, this thread makes sense.
In what way?
Anonymous
03/05/2026 18:04
Subject: Most fun T25 private
Anonymous wrote:Fun is really kid specific.
+1
Anonymous
03/05/2026 17:45
Subject: Most fun T25 private
For the wealthy, this thread makes sense.
Anonymous
03/05/2026 17:22
Subject: Most fun T25 private
I have two kids at private universities on the top 20 list. Anecdotally, the schools that are still considered fun are Vanderbilt, Chicago, Notre Dame, and Brown. Also Rice, though not in a Greek partying way. More like nerd fun. Also hear that students are having a good time at McGill, Michigan, and UCLA. I think fun at Columbia and USC is very much correlated to money, so not fun for everyone.
Anonymous
03/05/2026 17:12
Subject: Most fun T25 private
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:From my freshman's HS friends (in this order) - some are T25/30 but all private:
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame
USC
Northwestern
UChicago (surprising to me)
MIT
Georgetown
Cornell (another surprise)
Dartmouth
Penn
Duke (it's fallen a bit - used to be much more "fun")
It's Vanderbilt then USC then a massive gap before the rest of the schools on this list.
Notre Dame is fairly social, but the scene is dorm-centric, which gets old after a year or two.
Dartmouth and Duke are no longer the Chad-friendly Dartmouth and Duke of the 1990s and even the 2000s.
Northwestern's rep has similarly changed, though it was never as fun to begin with.
Penn has some Chads in Wharton, but it's a more buttoned-up kind of "fun" than at an actual party school.
Cornell has a surprisingly decent Greek scene but also an absolute TON of engineering chuds who can be seen lugging overstuffed backpacks around campus at 10pm on Saturday nights.
Chicago, MIT, Georgetown: no.
why would this bother anyone?
Cornell recently sanctioned fraternity members for waterboarding pledges with vodka. Is that fun?
Recently? That was 2019.
This year.
Anonymous
03/05/2026 16:14
Subject: Most fun T25 private
Anonymous wrote:exactly! At my DC's college, spending a Saturday night playing video games in the suite is their idea of fun while there is no way in hell I would even think to do this when I was in college back in the day...lol.Anonymous wrote:Fun is really kid specific.
Is that because kids have become less social overall with the advent of phones? Dorm room doors are closed now by default; kids don't go to common rooms AT ALL because they have their heads in their phones....
If schools don't actively search for those outgoing organizer-type kids, no one would leave their rooms, and everyone would spend Sat night playing video games.
This btw, is how societies die. Slowly.
Anonymous
03/05/2026 16:12
Subject: Most fun T25 private
exactly! At my DC's college, spending a Saturday night playing video games in the suite is their idea of fun while there is no way in hell I would even think to do this when I was in college back in the day...lol.Anonymous wrote:Fun is really kid specific.
Anonymous
03/05/2026 15:09
Subject: Most fun T25 private
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:From my freshman's HS friends (in this order) - some are T25/30 but all private:
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame
USC
Northwestern
UChicago (surprising to me)
MIT
Georgetown
Cornell (another surprise)
Dartmouth
Penn
Duke (it's fallen a bit - used to be much more "fun")
It's Vanderbilt then USC then a massive gap before the rest of the schools on this list.
Notre Dame is fairly social, but the scene is dorm-centric, which gets old after a year or two.
Dartmouth and Duke are no longer the Chad-friendly Dartmouth and Duke of the 1990s and even the 2000s.
Northwestern's rep has similarly changed, though it was never as fun to begin with.
Penn has some Chads in Wharton, but it's a more buttoned-up kind of "fun" than at an actual party school.
Cornell has a surprisingly decent Greek scene but also an absolute TON of engineering chuds who can be seen lugging overstuffed backpacks around campus at 10pm on Saturday nights.
Chicago, MIT, Georgetown: no.
why would this bother anyone?
Cornell recently sanctioned fraternity members for waterboarding pledges with vodka. Is that fun?
Recently? That was 2019.