Three VT Colleges Take Top Toking Honors

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It's that time of year again, the time when Francophone tourists occupy downtown Burlington like U.S. troops in Iraq. It's also the time of year when the higher ed racketeer Princeton Review releases the results of their annual college popularity contest. The rankings are rarely a surprise.

Schools like Penn State, WVU and University of Georgia are regularly ranked top date-rape party colleges, while institutions like Brigham Young and Grove City College consistently get high marks for squareness and bigotry.

While no Vermont schools topped any of the lists, we did get a few nods. Here's how our little state fared.

Of the top 373 colleges in the United States, six are in Vermont:

Bennington College

Green Mountain College

Marlboro College

Middlebury College

St. Michael's College

University of Vermont

Those six schools, plus Sterling College, also made it onto the 218 Best Northeast Colleges list. 

Bennington ranked second for least religious students and third for Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging, clove-smoking vegetarians. Will this state ever shed its neo-hippie image? Doubtful.

Green Mountain College landed on the list for class discussions encouraged, coming in at number four. They were also one of three Vermont schools to take top honors for "Reefer Madness," which I guess is a nice way of saying the students are lit out of their minds most of the time. However, they only ranked 17, which I guess means they're somewhat less stoned than their contemporaries at UVM and Marlboro.

Speaking of quaint Marlboro, the tiny liberal arts school landed third on the "Intercollegiate Sports Unpopular or Nonexistent" list. They also ranked fifth on the curiously titled "Dodgeball Targets" list. I guess that means either that people want to hit the students in the face with rubber balls, or that they're more likely to play dodgeball than ice hockey.

Middlebury ranked third on the "Profs Get High Marks" list, which is no surprise when you remember that world-saver-in-residence Bill McKibben teaches there. Only profs at Reed College in Oregon and Wellesley in Massachusetts ranked higher. Midd also landed on the "School Runs Like Butter" list. If students are paying $40,000+ a year, it better run like butter.

St. Mike's was ranked second for town-gown relations. Apparently those good Catholic kids don't give us tax-paying citizens any guff. Good for them. Sacramental wine for all!

Craftsbury's minuscule Sterling College didn't make any rankings. But if I was in charge of the world, I'd give them a prize for Most Rad/Bizarre Major — Northern Studies. They study the tundra. Brrr. (We once wrote about that here.) 

UVM's claim to fame was its students' proclivity for pot. Ranking fourth on the reefer madness list no doubt makes the school's board of trustees very proud. Perhaps they should create a Weed Studies program. Maybe then they'd rank higher.

Comments

[Tyler Machado]

When I went to St. Mike's, I always had a feeling that the reason they required all students to live on campus was to keep good relations with the neighbors -- that way, UVM kids could get the destruction reputation while we seemed like little Catholic angels (even though we were just as bad). I'm more convinced of that theory now.

The residential policy was supposed to foster an educational environment, or something like that, but being woken up by people trashing the dorm hallways or puking loudly 5 nights a week wasn't very good for anyone's study habits.

Those were the days.

[Buff Lindau]

About Saint Michael's students and their good local reputation. Service by the SMC Fire & Rescue Squads is highly thought of, as is the service work students do throughout the community, significant enough to earn the college's service program, MOVE, the United Way's 2009 Hometown Hero Award.

[Tyler Machado]

Oh yeah, I'm not doubting the fine work of the MOVE kids and the Fire & Rescue team. Delivering that professor's baby on the side of I-89? That was something. Just saying that, in a city (well, next to a city) where the student population is blamed for noisy neighborhoods and high rents on crappy apartments, tethering the students to campus is a shrewd move -- especially when it comes time for fancy lists like this one.

I do wonder, though, how the Princeton Review decides what schools have great "town-gown relations," if the lists are the results of student surveys. Shouldn't they be surveying the locals to verify that, yes, it is a mutually beneficial relationship between the town and the school? I'm not doubting the results, in this case -- just doubting the methodology.

[Whitney Feininger]

I'm a University of Georgia alumni (BA, 2005) who relocated to Burlington shortly after graduating. While I can't speak about Penn State and WVU, UGA - mostly due to a large undergraduate student population, a popular football team, and an established Greek system - will likely always earn a spot on the "party school" list. That does not mean it should be labeled a "date-rape" school. During my time at UGA, I found that the school went out of its way to maintain both a campus and a town where women are safe, providing everything from alcohol and sexual education, counseling services, and 24-hour campus police escorts. Finally, as a woman in my mid-20s, I don't see date-rape as something to be laughed at, and I am surprised to see Ms.Ober use the term in a joking manner.

The Princeton Review's survey methods and questions are available at http://www.princetonreview.com/college/college-rankings.aspx

[Diane]

I'm with Whitney.

[Oberfan]

I love Lauren Ober's sense of humor. Almost unfit for print, but so wonderfully edgy.

[Jimmy]

I love how she always has a "friend" come in and "defend" her in situations like this.