By Mark Selig

Best Place for Live Music

Want to hear someone mimic Michael Jackson? Head to Santa Fe. AP

To stand out from the other local bars, Santa Fe often hosts entertaining cover and tribute bands for bar-goers to enjoy. Past acts include bands mimicking Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews Band, Journey, and even Michael Jackson. If you're going to overpay for drinks and be crammed amongst your peers, you might as well add in some live music.

Best Place to Watch a Live Sporting Event

While many complain that it never gets as loud for basketball games as the old, Cole Field House did, Comcast Center is a state-of-the-art NCAA arena. It holds 17,950 fans and boasts a steep wall where students sit, behind the visiting team's second half basket. Unlike Duke, where students have to camp out for tickets, Maryland has a weighted online lottery system, rewarding "loyalty points" to fans that attend games and get their tickets scanned on the way in.

Best Place to Watch Your Favorite NFL Team Play

With the local Redskins and Ravens being shown on the network channels, it's difficult to find coverage of students' favorite NFL teams. But Cornerstone Bar has you covered, as it shows every NFL game each weekend on its plethora of televisions. If you can put up with the surplus of loud Philadelphia Eagles fans going to the bar to watch (and yell) while their team plays, you'll find a great atmosphere to catch each game.

Best Place to Get a Tan

Once the weather heats up, La Plata beach is the hot spot on campus. Located beside freshman dorms, students use the "beach" which is really a field with two beach volleyball courts set up, to play anything from football to wiffleball to horseshoes. And sure, plenty of the lazier folks just prop down a blanket and take in the rays.

Best Place to Wait Outside on the Weekends

Maryland's brand-new bar, the Thirsty Turtle has gotten rave reviews from students, but getting in is no quick task. With lines stretching down an entire block, it can take forever to just be admitted into the building. Never have students been so happy to see bouncers before.

Best Place for Terps Gear

The official school bookstore at the Adele Stamp Student Union Building offers a wide range of clothing, games, collectibles, and other gift items to show your Maryland Pride. The store has jerseys of the major sports teams, T-shirts galore, and a bunch of different hats to choose from. Oh yeah, they also have textbooks downstairs, and I guess those are kind of essential for learning too.

Best Place to Kill Time Between Classes

Terp Zone, located in the student union, has a bowling alley, pool tables, arcade and a lounge to watch television. There's also a Subway in Terp Zone, or students can walk downstairs to the food court for various other options including Sbarro, Chick-fil-A, McDonalds and Taco Bell.

Best Place to Catch a Movie

The Hoff Theater, also in the union is a student run movie theater that screens older films that have not made it to DVD yet. With its discounted rate and reasonable prices for movie essentials (popcorn, soda, candy), Hoff is a nice alternative to the usually expensive movie-going experience.

Best Athletic Team Nobody Knows About

While football, basketball and lacrosse get all the hype at Maryland, the field hockey team has been the best this decade. With coach Missy Meharg running the team for the past 20 years, the Terps' stick-girls have been a huge success -- winning four national championships in the past 10 years -- and are always near the top of the country's most competitive conference -- the ACC.