Iowa Knows How To Party?

The University of Iowa ranked No. 1 on this year’s list of “Top Party Schools,” according to Princeton Review, taking the title from West Virginia University (which dropped to No. 4 on the list).

Meanwhile the University of South Carolina – which was ranked No. 17 a year ago on the party list – dropped out of the Top 20 this year.

Princeton Review releases the list annual as part of its Best 378 Colleges guide – which includes more than 60 rankings based on the results of more than 122,000 online surveys.

The guide does not select a top school for academics, but does rank institutions based on the quality of their faculty, facilities and career placement services, among other categories. It also includes rankings based on extracurricular pursuits, politics and other factors.

To order your copy of the 2014 guide, click here.

Anyway, here are Princeton Review’s top party schools for the 2013-14 year …

1. University of Iowa (Iowa City, Iowa)
2. University of California – Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, California)
3. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Urbana, Illinois)
4. West Virginia University (Morgantown West Virginia)
5. Syracuse University (Syracuse, New York)
6. University of Florida (Gainesville, Florida)
7. Ohio University (Athens, Ohio)
8. University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, Wisconsin)
9. Penn State University (University Park, Pennsylvania)
10. Lehigh University (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania)
11. University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia)
12. Florida State University (Tallahassee, Florida)
13. DePauw University (Greencastle, Indiana)
14. University of Mississippi (University, Mississippi)
15. University of Texas at Austin (Austin, Texas)
16. Miami University of Ohio (Oxford, Ohio)
17. University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
18. Tulane University (New Orleans, Louisiana)
19. University of Vermont (Burlington, Vermont)
20. University of Oregon (Eugene, Oregon)

Princeton Review isn’t the nation’s only party school ranking. Playboy and Newsweek each publish lists, and each spring the website BroBible.com releases a list of the Top 50 party schools (the “BroBible Party School Index“) based on a mathematical formula that incorporates these national rankings as well as other factors the Princeton Reviewers may have missed.

According to BroBible’s latest rankings, West Virginia is still America’s top party school – followed by Florida, Texas, Wisconsin and Georgia. Iowa came in at No. 14 on its rankings.