Playboy's Top Party Schools

Claim:   Playboy magazine compiles annual rankings of America's top party schools.

MIXTURE OF TRUE AND FALSE INFORMATION:

	FALSE:   Playboy magazine compiles annual rankings of America's top party schools.
	TRUE:   Playboy magazine has sometimes printed other publications' rankings of America's top party schools.
	TRUE:   Playboy magazine has occasionally published their own rankings of America's top party schools.
	TRUE:   Other organizations compile and publish their own rankings of America's top party schools.

Origins:   Since the 1950s, rumors have been aired at every college in the U.S. that Playboy conducted surveys of drinking on college campuses and used them to compile annual lists of "America's best party schools" (rumors usually spread by students proudly proclaiming that their own school had achieved the #1 slot

in the latest ranking). However, not until the late 1980s did Playboy actually publish a ranking of this nature, and it was never an annual feature of the magazine.

Through the end of 2006, such a list had appeared in the pages of Playboy only three times: in its January 1987, November 2002, and May 2006 issues. However, there were two precursors to the full-blown list: the September 1968 issue identified the University of Wisconsin at Madison as the most permissive campus (drawn from a sample of 25 universities) and dubbed it "the party school" (primarily because it served beer in the student union); likewise the October 1976 issue named UCLA tops in "campus action."

In more recent years Playboy has sometimes republished college rankings compiled by others, such as the annual list of The Top 20 Party Schools as determined by The Princeton Review.

Prior to 2002, Playboy had compiled their own list of "party schools" only once. They gave their reason for reprising this feature in 2002 as:

The information for Playboy's 1987 list of party schools had been compiled in 1986 from the reports of Playboy staffers who interviewed campus club leaders, dorm rush chairmen, fraternity presidents and other campus social studs at more than 250 schools nationwide. Which leads us straight into the legend which has sprung up around this famed list:

Gentle souls that they are, Playboy referenced this bit of folklore (a charming bit of blarney which been told about any number of schools, cheese-enhanced and otherwise, for many years prior to 1987) and did their best console those who were left off the January 1987 compilation by stating, "If your school isn't listed, it's probably because we didn't include professionals."

For those who really want to know how their institutions of higher learning fare now in the "party school" category, Princeton Review’s latest eagerly-awaited annual ranking of the Top 20 party schools was issued as follows in August 2014, based on a survey of 130,000 students at 379 schools:

1. Syracuse University


2. University of Iowa


3. University of California at Santa Barbara


4. West Virginia University


5. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


6. Lehigh University


7. Pennsylvania State University at University Park


8. University of Wisconsin at Madison


9. Bucknell University


10. University of Florida


11. Miami University


12. Florida State University


13. Ohio University at Athens


14. DePauw University


15. University of Georgia


16. University of Mississippi


17. Tulane University


18. University of Vermont


19. University of Oregon


20. University of Delaware

Barbara "party line" Mikkelson

Last updated:   21 August 2014

Sources: