It’s Party On at Some Schools

ABC News On Campus reporter Cate Smithson blogs:

What does it take to make Playboy magazine’s annual list of the top 10 party schools in the country? It’s complicated. While the scoring system is not without bias—schools in warm-weather cities have an advantage—the 2009 list revealed this week ranked the predictable slew of schools your parents would probably not want you to go to, with the University of Miami as the front-runner.

The results were reached through a series of complex mathematical equations in the categories of Bikini, Sex, Campus Life, Sports, and Brains. The Bikini equation goes like this: [(highest average temperature in May + number of days of sunshine + the number of tanning salons near campus + the number of cosmetic surgeons) x percentage of guy-to-girl ratio] + number of nursing majors + Playboy’s rank of the school’s cheerleaders. Campus Life scores were found 2 x (number of bars + number of liquor stores + gallons of beer consumed in the state each year) = N. Enrollment / (number of clubs + number of Greek organizations) = Q. Each school’s Q gets subtracted from the highest Q, the remaining number being Z. Finally, 100/N + 100/Z provided the final answer. Phew! I knew there was I reason I’m a journalism major.

The University of Texas at Austin, my alma mater, made the list (No. 2 party school in the country, thank you very much). And while I can’t say I’m happy about the fact that I was forced to log onto Playboy.com in a bustling coffee shop for the sake of my research, I think UT fully deserved its hard-won top spot. There’s never a lack of things to do in Austin: trip over a frat kid dry heaving in the street! Make friends with a hippie bum on the way to a local dive bar just to say you did! Bond over a shared, alcohol-induced hatred for the opposing team at a football game! Give it a  go, and may your aspirations be only as high as your alcohol tolerance.