Claim:   At one time, Playboy ran a survey about drinking on college campuses and compiled a list of top party schools from its results. Status:   True. Origins:   Since about 1955, rumors have been aired at every college in the country that Playboy had at one time run a survey of drinking on campus and that a particular school was listed as Number 1. As best as can be ascertained now, such a survey appeared in the pages of Playboy only once, in its January 1987 issue. (Playboy has sometimes used college rankings compiled by others, such as this list of The Top 20 Party Schools for 2000 as ranked by The Princeton Review.) The information for Playboy's one and only list of party schools was 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 The list read as follows: 01. California State University, Chico 02. University of Miami, Coral Gables 03. San Diego State University, San Diego 04. University of Vermont, Burlington 05. Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania 06. University of Connecticut, Storrs 07. West Virginia University, Morgantown 08. Plymouth State College, Plymouth, New Hampshire 09. Mercer University, Macon, Georgia 10. University of Virginia, Charlottesville 11. State University of New York, Cortland 12. Colorado State University, Fort Collins 13. Arizona State University, Tempe 14. University of Nevada, Las Vegas 15. Boston University, Boston 16. Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant 17. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale 18. Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana 19. Oklahoma State University, Stillwater 20. Central Connecticut State University, New Britain 21. University of Maryland, College Park 22. University of Mississippi, Oxford 23. West Georgia College, Carrollton 24. University of Texas, Austin 25. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 26. University of Kansas, Lawrence 27. Kansas State University, Manhattan 28. Glassboro State College, Glassboro, New Jersey 29. University of Florida, Gainesville 30. Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond 31. University of Iowa, Iowa City 32. University of Oklahoma, Norman 33. Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 34. Ohio University, Athens 35. University of Massachusetts at Amherst 36. University of Georgia, Athens 37. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge 38. University of Missouri/Rolla 39. Reed College, Portland, Oregon 40. Fairhaven College, Bellingham, Washington Honorable Mentions: Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Colorado at Boulder, Columbia, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Iowa State, Kent State, Michigan State, Penn State, Purdue, Rhode Island, Rutgers, Tennessee at Knoxville, Trinity College. It bears repeating: Playboy has not pulled together such a list since 1987. Any claims made by drunken frat brothers that this year your school is listed as #1 should be greeted with hoots of laughter. Gentle souls that they are, Playboy does its best to take the sting out of being left off the January 1987 compilation by stating, "If your school isn't listed, it's probably because we didn't include professionals." Which leads us straight into the legend which has sprung up around this famed list. Then there's the computer bulletin board-fueled story about the magazine (usually Playboy) that was ranking the Top 10 Party Schools in the country. Students at the University of Wisconsin were taken aback when their school didn't rate even an honorable mention; after all, everyone knows about the legendary cheesehead antics that go on in Madison. But when the kids contacted the magazine, they were told: "We don't rank professionals." But of course this charming bit of blarney has been told about any number of schools, cheese-enhanced and otherwise. Barbara "party line" Mikkelson Last updated:   26 September 2000