retired_amaynirvana

Oh. Had enough jock cliques at my last school. Cheers.

retired_mauilisa

In the schools with 90% in Fraternities, is it rigid - with the people generally tied down to the social group in that fraternity? What tends to happen with the international students?

I have a problem with being told what to do/humiliating myself, luckily there's less of that thing in England... doesn't tend to happen in boxing. Footballers can **** off. If I played rugby I'd have probably ended up an outcast though for not getting involved in initiations.

retired_sedimohasel

From my experience International Students don't join Frats. Me and my friends went to a few of their parties to check it out and it clearly wasn't our scene so we never went back so we were friends with non-frat members.

retired_gilgamesh36

How does Babson rank?

retired_autumn

There are nerd frats and service frats as well, but their purpose in most cases seems to be to get you drunk and/or laid on a regular basis. Which is pretty much what a lot of people want from their college experience, so it serves a purpose.

It's not all bad, but there is definitely some stupidity involved. Most likely involving some sort of 'prove how much you love your brothers' moments, of the sort that lead to drunk fights with some 'rival' frat, or getting branded with your Greek letters.

When college kids get drunk with other college kids, their decision tree becomes almost 90% stupid. But, tbqh, you can have a lot of fun being stupid.

retired_craftynm@pa.net

Was expecting that; unfortunately I've never been to California so have no idea on which are the nicest areas. So out of the UC's, do any stand out?

Berkeley
Davis
Irvine
Los Angeles
Merced
Riverside
San Diego
San Francisco
Santa Barbara
Santa Cruz </BLOCKQUOTE>

Berkeley the strongest academically, but the city of Berkeley takes some getting used to for some. Expensive, dirty, full shifty types.

Davis kind of in the middle of nowhere (their teams are called the Aggies), and it shuts down pretty early in the evening. Specializes in medicine and agricultural studies. On the plus side, it's cheaper than the Bay Area and within about an hour's drive of the Bay and a half hour's of Sacramento.

Irvine somewhat non-descript. Known as a science school and located in some of the less exclusive areas of Orange County, iirc.

LA is strong, but I have a personal distaste for Southern California. And you need to consider that UCLA has a gigantic student body.

Riverside, no idea. Non-descript, not real prestigious.

San Diego is a science school and is nicknamed the "University of Social Dysfunction" because the student body is considerably geekier than San Diego State's. (Though SDSU students are awful.) San Diego's beautiful, though.

UC San Francisco is only a medical school, iirc.

Santa Barbara has a reputation for being a wild party school. Big, somewhat ugly frat scene. But Santa Barbara can be quite nice (though expensive).

UC Santa Cruz is one of the less prestigious UC's. It's really California's premier hippy school in the face of the modern Asian-ization of Berkeley (mind, I view this as a good thing). Santa Cruz is pretty cool. Lots of weed.

Merced is only a couple of years old. I've only ever been to the town and not the campus, but the town and surrounding area sucks. Really, really, really sucks.

retired_autumn

I noticed the same thing. For some reason I thought it would be like Palo Alto and Stanford.

retired_amaynirvana

That's brilliant thanks. Cheers all.

retired_kimmymarlo

How does Babson rank? </BLOCKQUOTE>not great tbqh.

retired_nafrally

Any of you guys heard of UAB? How does that rate academically?