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The school's social life focuses on the dorms and the limited Greek
system. Due to the fact that 99% of undergrads live on campus, most
people seem to meet in their dorms/classes and then spend time together
on campus. Tresidder Union offers a casual little Mexican restaurant, a
cafeteria with pizza and yogurt, a Jamba Juice and a coffee house (the
CoHo), which offers sandwiches, beer, coffee and live music.
People do venture off-campus to downtown Palo Alto where there are many
decent restaurants, shops and some bars. Palo Alto tends to close down
around 9pm, though, with the exception of the bars.
The Greek scene at Stanford is pretty small with only 5 or 6 housed
frats and 5 sororities (of which 2 are now housed, I think). Most
people on campus who are not part of the frats/sororities have a fairly
low opinion of them, from what I've gathered. Many freshmen spend the
first quarter or so frequenting the frat parties every Fri/Sat night.
Once the novelty wears off, people seem to spend more time at dorm-
sponsored or random parties. RAs do not act as alcohol police at
Stanford, so there is a fair amount of drinking in dorms.
As for dating, it's a common joke that it doesn't happen that frequently
at Stanford. What is common are "hook-ups" and hanging around in co-ed
groups. Due to the insular nature of the campus, dating (by going out
to dinner/movies/drinks) is not necessarily the norm. Many people at
Stanford did not date in high school (I suppose they were busy
achieving), so I think, in general, those people are slower to start
dating in college. Besides hook-ups there is a modest number of people
in longer-term, highly monogamous dating relationships. There is little
or no casual dating, but this may be more a function of our generation
than specifically a Stanford oddity.
Many high-profile speakers come to campus, in addition to wonderful
music groups and, sometimes, bands. While I was there, I saw Itzhak
Perlman, the Violent Femmes, Stephen Hawking, Danny Glover and many
others which escape my memory right now.
San Francisco is also about an hour train ride away (or 40 min. by
car). The CalTrain runs right by the entrance to the campus and
provides transportation down to San Jose and up to SF.
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