We now take such things for granted, but it's important to remember that for hundreds of years after the fall of Rome, Europe underwent a long age of violence and terror, bereft of the wisdom and knowledge of the ancients, completely ignorant of which colleges were among the 20 Party Schools. We must consider ourselves lucky, then, that we live in an age where every year Princeton Review blesses us with a list of not just the Top 20 Party Schools but also a list of the Top 20 Stone-Cold Sober Campuses — a cornucopia of Schools We Would Never Want to Go To.

Morgantown's West Virginia University takes the top spot this year, followed by the University of Iowa; on the sober side, religiously-affiliated schools Brigham Young and Wheaton take one and two. Here are the full lists:

PARTY SCHOOLS

1. West Virginia University, Morgantown

2. University of Iowa, Iowa City

3. Ohio University, Athens

4. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

5. University of Georgia, Athens

6. University of Florida, Gainesville

7. University of California-Santa Barbara

8. Florida State University, Tallahassee

9. Miami University of Ohio, Oxford

10. Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.

11. Penn State University, University Park, Pa.

12. DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind.

13. University of Wisconsin-Madison

14. University of Mississippi

15. University of Texas-Austin

16. University of Maryland, College Park

17. University of South Carolina, Columbia

18. James Madison University, Harrisonburg Va.

19. University of Maine, Orono

20. University of Tennessee, Knoxville

STONE-COLD SOBER SCHOOLS

1. Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

2. Wheaton College, Wheaton, Ill.

3. U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md.

4. U.S. Coast Guard Academy, New London, Conn.

5. Grove City College, Grove City, Pa.

6. U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y.

7. City University of New York-Brooklyn College

8. Wesleyan College, Macon, Ga.

9. Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass.

10. Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich.

11. City University of New York-City College

12. City University of New York-Queens-Hunter College, Flushing, N.Y.

13. Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, Needham, Mass.

14. Agnes Scott College, Atlanta-Decatur, Ga.

15. Simmons College, Boston

16. U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colo.

17. Pepperdine University, Malibu, Calif.

18. Becker College, Worcester, Mass.

19. Cooper Union for the Advancement of New York

20. California State University-Stanislaus, Turlock, Calif.

The AP has a nice summary of Morgantown:

[I]n the city of Morgantown... students and other revelers regularly set street and trash bin fires to celebrate everything from the beginning or end of a semester to a major athletic victory.

As of late June, after the end of the last semester, city fire officials said they'd responded to 115 fires. They tend to occur in batches, and 36 were set over St. Patrick's Day weekend alone.

The record is 274 fires set in 2003.

We asked a U.C. Santa Barbara graduate why she thought her school — generally heralded as the partying-est, bro-est school of all time — had slipped so far in the rankings. "Nothing was the same after the raccoon died," she told us, referring to the "legendary albino raccoon" that was killed by a dog in 2007.

Above, a photo of the Illusion Nightclub in Morgantown.

[AP]