Looking for the party? Princeton Review no longer recommends trying the University of Iowa

Students looking to attend a party school shouldn't look to the University of Iowa anymore — at least that's the sentiment from the Princeton Review. 

As recently as 2015, Princeton Review considered UI the No. 2 party school. But — in what likely prompted a small sigh of relief from University of Iowa administrators — the institution no longer makes the coveted top-20 Party Schools list.

READ: University of Iowa falls to No. 6 in party school rankings

After a decade, the University of Iowa, which held the No. 11 place spot last year, has been bumped from off the list, which now includes the following: 

1. University of Delaware
2. West Virginia University
3. Tulane University
4. Syracuse University
5. Bucknell University
6. Lehigh University
7. University of California, Santa Barbara
8. University of Wisconsin-Madison
9. Colgate University
10. University of Rhode Island
11. The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
12. University of Vermont
13. Providence College
14. Wake Forest University
15. Union College
16. University of Maine
17. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
18. University of Florida
19. Florida State University
20. Sonoma State University

In deciding who goes on the list, the Princeton Review surveys students on how often they consume alcohol or drugs, the number of hours they study outside of class and the popularity of fraternities and sororities. 

Iowa's Big Ten rival school Wisconsin, whose fans will be in town en masse this weekend for a big football showdown, did make the list at No. 8. The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana is the other Big Ten school on the list, checking in at No. 17.

The surveys also decide who makes the "Stone-Cold Sober Schools" list — UI did not make that list either.

"Its out there," says Tanya Villhauer, associate director for the Harm Reduction and Strategic Initiative, casually. "It's nice that they see [students] aren't as high risk."

Gearing up for an intensive fourth campaign to reduce drinking at UI, Villhauer doesn't appear to put too much significance in the news. 

Getting closer to a Stone-Cold Sober school?  

Instead, she and the committee that created an "Alcohol Harm Reduction Plan" focus on their own surveys. 

According to the latest plan, UI administrators want to be able to say in 2019 that fewer than half the student body has indulged in "high-risk drinking" within the last two weeks.

The university has been chipping away at this goal for nearly a decade, but reached it this year. In 2009, 70 percent of students had participated in high-risk drinking, in the two weeks prior to the survey; This August, the university announced that 49.6 percent of students reported heavy drinking in the two weeks prior to the survey. 

When it comes to marijuana, however, the university reported a higher rate of daily and month use this year, something administrators said matched nationwide trends. 

Just over 17 percent of students surveyed in 2018 reported using marijuana for 10 or more days in the last 30 days, compared to 12 percent in 2013. Almost 8 percent of students reported using marijuana daily, a figure that is up from 4 percent in 2013.  

Cocaine use also increased by almost 3 percent, to 5 percent of students surveyed. 

Much of the gain in reducing alcohol consumption so far has come from efforts to reshape the Hawkeye image. As Villhauer puts it, the committee looks hard at the environment students enter into when they come to the University of Iowa and ways to support students who chose not to drink. 

"If they think every student drinks, that sets the expectation, 'that's what I need to do to be a Hawkeye,'" she said. 

She points to efforts from the Campus Activities board to create more late night activities, which give students alternatives to drinking, and efforts to focus more on the academic side of UI in recruiting.  

"We're kind of at the point where we've [grabbed] the low-hanging fruit, the big things that make a big impact," she said. 

Now, says Villhauer, the goal with the next Alcohol Harm Reduction Plan, which will pick up where the current one ends, is to drill deeper into the statistics to target the pockets of students who still drink heavily.