party school" in a September 1968 issue, and deemed the University of California, Los Angeles "tops in campus action" in 1976. However, the magazine did not actually rank schools until January 1987. In 2009, Playboy announced it would make the list an annual feature in the magazine. McGill University, in Montreal and the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario, are the only Canadian schools to have made the list. Criticism of party school lists In 2003, the American Medical Association requested that the Princeton Review remove the party school rankings from its college guides. Dr. Richard Yost, director of the AMA's Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse, said, "The Princeton Review should be ashamed to publish something for students and parents that fuels the false notion that alcohol is central to the college experience and that ignores the dangerous consequences of high-risk drinking. College binge drinking is a major public health issue and a source of numerous problems for institutions of higher learning." The accuracy of The Princeton Review's rankings has also been questioned, especially with regards to the larger schools. Experts argue that the sample size of students surveyed at each college (three hundred students, on average) is not enough to provide a truthful depiction of student behavior. "It's positively unscientific," said Dr. Henry Wechsler of the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Studies Program. Administrators, professors, and many students at so-called "party schools" have tried to disassociate themselves from the rankings. For example, West Virginia University president Michael Garrison refused to give interviews about his school's appearance in the 2007–08 Princeton Review list. "I've talked to thousands of our students over the weekend and during the first days of classes. Their concerns are with their education, with their futures, and with the great year we have ahead at WVU," he said in a prepared statement. COVID-19 Public relations aside, there were outbreaks of COVID-19 at "party schools" in September 2020 as they attempted to open to in-person learning in the Fall of 2020. Notes Further reading Armstrong, Elizabeth A., and Hamilton, Laura T. (2013). Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. . External links Snopes article, with Playboy's 2014 rankings School types Student culture in the United States Playboy