The University of Arizona best student newspaper, according to this year's Princeton Review rankings. And the UA also returned to the list of top party schools after a 10-year absence,
The Arizona Daily Wildcat lost its top spot, coming in second behind Yale. And on the most infamous list in college rankings, the university is rated as the 18th-biggest party school in the country. The UA is also high on the list for use of hard liquor, 11th, and beer, 19th.
The University of Texas-Austin topped the Princeton Review's annual party school rankings, with last year's No. 1 party school, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, slipping to fourth.
On newsstands today, the Princeton Review's annual college ranking, "The Best 361 Colleges," is based on an 80-question survey given randomly to 115,000 students. About 300 students answered at each of the 361 campuses listed in the book.
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The best-college-newspaper rankings are based on student responses to this question: "How popular is your campus newspaper?"
The party school rankings are based on use of alcohol and drugs, hours spent studying, and the popularity of fraternities and sororities.
Lynn Reyes, an alcohol prevention specialist with UA Campus Health, said in general students across the country consider their schools a party school, but tend to have a misperception of just how much their fellow students are using alcohol or drugs.
"Students perceive partying to be more prevalent than what our data show," she said.
"What happens when you come to class on a Monday morning, someone is recapping a party they attended on the weekend. They're talking about one person who did some particular behavior that was very noticeable, something silly," she said. "That gets repeated numerous times and creates this perception that a lot of people were at this party."
Campus Health has conducted an annual survey for the past 10 years and finds that most students drink moderately if at all.
In this year's survey, the average number of days per week that students party is 1.3, slightly up from 1.2 last year, and students have an average of four drinks when they party.
"A lot of people are having a small number of drinks and nobody says 'Wow, so-and-so wasn't drinking a lot and had a great time,'" Reyes said. "It's not the kind of thing you talk about and boast about the day after."
More than one in five students reported not drinking at all during the school year, while 69 percent reported drinking in the past 30 days.
"The norm is not the excessive drinker or the high-risk drinker," Reyes said.
The UA's student newspaper rating, a perennial strength in Princeton Review rankings, is a testament to the work of more than 150 students on the staff, said Mark Woodhams, director of Arizona Student Media.
"Any time the Wildcat wins an award, it's recognition of the hard work and enterprise our students engage in," he said. "The Princeton rankings are basically a popularity contest, but that's good, because it shows our readers like the Wildcat and the product our editors put together resonates with the campus community."
Seeing students reading the Arizona Daily Wildcat is common on campus, said Nicole Santa Cruz, editor in chief.
"That's something that's not new to me at all, but it's great to know students are regarding it as something they want to read," she said. "It's an amazing outcome for the students who work so hard to put out the paper every day."
In previous years, the UA had ranked on lists for top jock schools, top intramural sports schools and schools where students pack the stadiums.
Arizona State University was ranked in the top 20 for professors who make themselves scarce, professors who get low marks and students who almost never study.
1. University of Texas-Austin
2. Penn State University
3. West Virginia University
4. University of Wisconsin-Madison
5. University of Mississippi
6. Ohio University
7. University of Mass.-Amherst
8. Louisiana State University
9. University of Iowa
10. University of California-Santa Barbara
1. Brigham Young University
2. Wheaton College
3. College of the Ozarks
4. Grove City College
5. U.S. Naval Academy
6. U.S. Coast Guard Academy
7. U.S. Air Force Academy
8. Queens College
9. Wellesley College
10. Calvin College
Source: The Princeton Review
