• The University of California, Santa Barbara, was just ranked as the US's No.1 party school. • I was an exchange student there from the University of Edinburgh for the 2016/2017 school year. • It was undoubtedly a party school, but it offered so much more than that.

The first time my new roommates and I walked down Del Playa, UCSB's oceanfront street, it quickly became obvious why the college had a reputation as a haven of hedonism, where students go to study a little and party a lot.

To a soundtrack of Drake, students lined up to get into frat houses as paramedics loaded a girl who looked like she'd had too much to drink into an ambulance.

It was barely 7 p.m. and the September sun was still out.

It looked like a scene from a teen movie, far removed from my experience at universi

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