Panther Party

Penn St. takes top party school title in survey
By GENARO ARMAS, Associated Press Writer

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Penn State University is now the nation's No. 1 party school.

The school known partly for its football tailgate weekends and fraternity and sorority scene snatched the title away from the University of Florida in the 2009 Princeton Review survey of 122,000 students nationwide. Florida, last year's winner, finished second in the annual survey released Monday.

It's the first time Penn State has finished first in the dubious category. The school has been on the list the last seven years and ranked third in 2008. The listing covers Penn State's main University Park campus in State College.

"These rankings are not more than popularity contests," said university spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz. She noted that groups on the social networking site Facebook have urged members to make Penn State the top party school.

"It's a badge of honor at this point. Nationwide, kids want to pump their schools in these surveys," Mountz said. "It's not connected to reality."

The rankings were part of the Princeton Review's "The Best 371 Colleges" annual guide. On average, there were 325 respondents to the survey per school, which Mountz said amounted to less than 1 percent of the University Park campus' enrollment of 43,000 students.

Penn State also finished first in the categories "lots of beer" and students who pack the stadium. Beaver Stadium is one of the country's largest sports facility, seating more than 107,000 for football games.

After Penn State and Florida, the top five institutions on the party schools list were the University of Mississippi, the University of Georgia, and Ohio University-Athens.

I've always wanted Tech to rank a little higher in these lists because I always had a really good time there but it's probably never going to happen. Tech is really more a drinking school than a party school. There's not any big weekends or events where people get drunk in Lubbock. It's just a constant grind of drunken debauchery. I wish they had a Top Degenerate School list.