USC Achieves Dubious Ranking — Again

It's the type of distinction that will likely make students hoot and holler — and make their parents cringe and groan. 

The University of South Carolina this week was named among the nation's top "party schools" by The Princeton Review, coming in at number 17. The state's flagship school last year ranked 20th.

The hard-partying, couch-burning Mountaineers of West Virginia topped the Review's party school list, while Utah's Brigham Young University, a Mormon-run institution, again topped the "Stone-Cold Sober" list. 

"Schools on the 'Party Schools' list are those at which surveyed students' answers indicated a combination of: low personal daily study hours (outside of class), high usages of alcohol and drugs on campus and high popularity on campus for frats/sororities," the Princeton Review said on its website.

Clemson University made a list of its own, albeit more prosaic. The Princeton Review rated the small-town college best in the nation for "town-gown" relations, meaning the symbiotic relationship between the townsfolk of Clemson and the university community.

The full lists:

PARTY SCHOOLS
1. West Virginia University, Morgantown
2. University of Iowa, Iowa City
3. Ohio University, Athens
4. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
5. University of Georgia, Athens
6. University of Florida, Gainesville
7. University of California-Santa Barbara
8. Florida State University, Tallahassee
9. Miami University of Ohio, Oxford
10. Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.
11. Penn State University, University Park, Pa.
12. DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind.
13. University of Wisconsin-Madison
14. University of Mississippi
15. University of Texas-Austin
16. University of Maryland, College Park
17. University of South Carolina, Columbia
18. James Madison University, Harrisonburg Va.
19. University of Maine, Orono
20. University of Tennessee, Knoxville

STONE-COLD SOBER SCHOOLS
1. Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah
2. Wheaton College, Wheaton, Ill.
3. U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md.
4. U.S. Coast Guard Academy, New London, Conn.
5. Grove City College, Grove City, Pa.
6. U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y.
7. City University of New York-Brooklyn College
8. Wesleyan College, Macon, Ga.
9. Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass.
10. Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich.
11. City University of New York-City College
12. City University of New York-Queens-Hunter College, Flushing, N.Y.
13. Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, Needham, Mass.
14. Agnes Scott College, Atlanta-Decatur, Ga.
15. Simmons College, Boston
16. U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colo.
17. Pepperdine University, Malibu, Calif.
18. Becker College, Worcester, Mass.
19. Cooper Union for the Advancement of New York
20. California State University-Stanislaus, Turlock, Calif.