[media-credit name=’DEREK MONTGOMERY/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Celebrated by students and dismissed by administrators, the Princeton Review’s 2006 “The Best 361 Colleges” rates the University of Wisconsin the No. 1 party school in the nation.

Among more specific criteria, UW placed third in “lots of beer” and “lots of hard liquor,” and seventh for “reefer madness.” The school received positive but less lofty marks in academics and student life.

Released in its annual college guidebook, the ratings are based on a 70-question, e-mailed survey asking undergraduate students to rate and comment on their university’s academic and social environments, covering everything from class size and teacher quality to drug and alcohol use. The results were compiled from 2,209 student-survey responses.

UW sophomore Chris Paulson, eagerly sipping a “mixer” in an overcrowded Thursday-night pre-bar on Langdon Street, surrounded by empty beer cans and liquor bottles, agreed many live up to the university’s reputation.

“It’s awesome,” Paulson said of the rating. “It’s cool because … we drink with the best of ’em, and we are with the best in academics as well. … And I like drinking.”

While some students tout the party ranking as a source of pride, university officials have found it hard to swallow. To rebut the negative connotations associated with the highly publicized ratings, a number of UW administrators have dismissed them as inaccurate.

Following the rankings’ release, Chancellor John Wiley, a former UW senior research officer, said in a statement that the review is based on “junk science that results in a day of national media coverage.”

Likewise, Provost Peter Spear said those who respond to Princeton Review surveys are not representative of the entire student body at UW.

“When 10 to 20 percent respond, you have to ask, ‘Who are those students?'” he said. “The serious students don’t bother to respond because they don’t take it seriously. It’s just poor social-science research.”

Yet the Princeton Review insists its rankings carry weight, portraying accurate opinion polls that universities often boast about — when academically oriented.

Robert Franek, author of “The Best 361 Colleges,” said universities receiving more “positive” rankings often “trumpet the fact that they are on a stellar Princeton Review list,” advertising their rankings “shamelessly” on marketing materials, acceptance letters and websites.

Conversely, Franek said universities with “less-than-stellar reviews” try to discredit the Princeton Review.

“Our mission is to provide good, clear information for college-bound students and their families so they can be truly savvy about the college research process,” Franek said. “We’re asking students questions about everything we think affects their [lives] — from academics to social life.”

Regardless of the rating’s accuracy, the review has not reflected increasing efforts to curb binge-drinking on the UW campus.

Susan Crowley, director of Policy, Alternatives, Community and Education, a UW group that focuses on “preventing the negative consequences” of underage and binge-drinking, said the Princeton Review ratings are misleading.

“I think they skew the perspective of potential students of what the party atmosphere is like at this university,” she said.

While Crowley acknowledged there are some justifications for the ranking — specifically, notorious Halloween disturbances and the history of the Mifflin Street Block Party — she said binge-drinking among UW students has decreased significantly in recent years.

According to Crowley, 59 percent of students identified themselves as binge-drinkers in 2004, compared to 67 percent in 1999.

Crowley added the number of freshmen who drink and numbers of students who are sent to police detoxification have also significantly decreased.