The Top Party Colleges for Engineers

What is a party school?

The term party school can often be synonymous with Fraternity activities and debauchery, but that isn't always the case. From a higher level, party schools are simply defined as those that have "frequent and numerous parties," often well attended.

Universities that are defined as party schools can have a healthy party scene... or they can have higher than average rates of student drinking and drug use. 

All that said, if you want to base your college decision on which school you can have the most "fun" at (and you don't define fun as calculating differential equations) then these are the schools you'd want to go to.

6. West Virginia University

To start off this list we're met with a party school that has a little bit more party in it than engineering. WVU is ranked number 6 in top party schools in the U.S. and has an engineering program ranked in the top 100. The school's engineering school actually has an office that works directly with NASA! 

5. University of California, Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara ranks number 2 of all party schools, at least in the U.S. where data is widely available. They also happen to rank number 9 in the top science schools across the U.S. as well. While there's no concrete way to tell if it's those partiers that are also doing the science, it does mean that if you're an engineer who wants to party, UCSB has you covered.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has long been regarded as one of the top technical schools in the world. They ran number 6 for both chemistry and computer science. So while you're observing the process of fermentation in your organic chemistry class, you can get some hands-on experience with the product of fermentation on the weekend.

This university is located in the heart of Illinois hosting some award-winning science programs. More important to this list that we've put together, they host a total of 95 fraternities and sororities claiming one of the largest Greek scenes in the entire U.S. 

3. Penn State University

Penn State University ranks as the 20th best physics and statistics university and ranks as high as number 6 in the earth sciences department. As far as partying goes at this eastern-U.S. university, they rank number in the top 10, at number 9.

While this school is certainly known for their American football team, they actually have pretty decent underlying academic programs. 

1. University of Wisconsin-Madison

And for our number one spot for engineering party schools, we have the university of Wisconsin-Madison. This school ranks in the top 20 of 7 different STEM categories:

Chemistry #9
Computer science #12
Statistics #15
Earth sciences #16
Math #17
Physics #17
Biological sciences #19

Impressive. If you want to get down during the day studying quantum physics and get down at night studying the inside of a crowded loud room, then this is the school for you. This university has 42,000 students on campus, which means that there's usually always a party going on somewhere.

Do you know of a university that has impressively good STEM academics but also knows how to host a part? Be sure to let us know below if you can think of a better engineering party school!