August
Market Moment: Teen Opinion on Princeton Review
Coming to us via a newspaper blog (?), here’s a piece about how the Princeton Review rankings affected one high school student’s search.
The result is, as the Princeton Review says, “that which a college admissions viewbook by its very nature can never really achieve—an uncensored view of life at a particular college.” And they’re right. I’m a senior in high school, and I’ll be applying to colleges this fall. The Princeton Review has been an important aid to my college search.
It lacks the clarity and wit of Sam Jackson’s reporting on his experiences, but it has something important that Sam lacks: it comes from someone not in-the-know about how college marketing works. Makes me wonder how many prospects really use the rankings and think that they truly offer an “uncensored view of life at a particular college.” Chilling.
And of course WWC makes a cameo as “Warren Wilson University” for our infamous listing.
August 30th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
Wow. That made me a little bit dizzy. How someone can read this (from Princeton Review methodology) and not take the listings with so much as a grain of salt is beyond me: “One last note: Our survey is qualitative and anecdotal rather than quantitative.” I hope that it is just a lack of foreknowledge of that methodology–I know that I didn’t realize that was how the review did their ranking until rather recently. Then again, the Princetown R folks are in some ways more up-front about their subjectivity than Fiske, and god knows how much faith people put in that… (disclaimer: I bought a copy of fiske 2007! it’s fun sometimes). Guide books are written on paper, not stone tablets sent from the heavens! I’ll have to take one of them and just start hitting people over the head with 371 best ___ if they start spouting the purported hyper-relevancy of the listings.
great link nonetheless : )
by the way: your footer is off one pixel to the right in firefox, or so!
August 30th, 2006 at 11:50 pm
Morgan, great post, I think you hit it on the head… Sam is obviously much more intune with the whole process.. We all love Sam’s wit and clarity, but unfortunately he is in definitely in the minority on this one…. We all hear that the USNEWS, PReview and others mean next to nothing.. Is this information coming from prospectives or from somewhere else? Maybe inside? I don’t know, but these rankings must mean something, they sure sell a ton of copies each and every year.. Just my 2…
August 31st, 2006 at 2:44 am
[...] Personally, and to the dismay of Higher Ed marketers, I react negatively at attempts to force feed me sanitized tour-guide babble. With me, you’re going to retain that flawless brand image for your donors but you’re going to lose some points in my book; I know most people don’t feel all that strongly about blundering, insincere attempts to pander. Now, when I take a tour, if I were to encounter something half as insincere as some of these student “blogs,” I would be more or less prepared for it. I’ve had good touring experiences, but if they glossed over some of the rougher details of a school (to a minor extent) so be it. “Selective recall” goes with that format and they add value with their knowledge anyways. But when I’m reading a blog that purports to be the real true honest life of a college student, I have little patience for marketing drivel. First, it feels misrepresentative. Secondly, it’s hugely patronizing to believe I’d be so gullible as to take it at face value. Most importantly, it doesn’t interest me. [...]
August 31st, 2006 at 2:59 am
[...] Personally, and to the dismay of Higher Ed marketers, I react negatively at attempts to force feed me sanitized tour-guide babble. With me, you’re going to retain that flawless brand image for your donors but you’re going to lose some points in my book; I know most people don’t feel all that strongly about blundering, insincere attempts to pander. Now, when I take a tour, if I were to encounter something half as insincere as some of these student “blogs,” I would be more or less prepared for it. I’ve had good touring experiences, but if they glossed over some of the rougher details of a school (to a minor extent) so be it. “Selective recall” goes with that format and they add value with their knowledge anyways. But when I’m reading a blog that purports to be the real true honest life of a college student, I have little patience for marketing drivel. First, it feels misrepresentative. Secondly, it’s hugely patronizing to believe I’d be so gullible as to take it at face value. Most importantly, it doesn’t interest me. [...]
August 31st, 2006 at 10:16 am
The Princeton Review’s marketing apparently works.
Andrew
August 31st, 2006 at 12:32 pm
No one can deny it. Rankings offer a viable shortcut for prospective students to learn about colleges. No need to fly across the country to take a tour or stay overnight. Rankings are the easy way to ensure an academically sound institution as well as a particular type of experience. For many, that’s all they have. Not everyone has the money to make “informed decisions.” And even if everyone did fly across the country to visit a campus, how “real” is a tour? How “real” is it to talk to an admissions officer? How much are you going to learn from a college fair? Rankings seem awfully good when you realize most other sources don’t tell you anything.
So I say, you might as well have rankings but make good use of them and generously supplement them. No one should just be looking at Princeton Review or just U.S. News or just Fiske. Try something along the lines of the Washington Monthly Guide:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0609.collegechart.html
or College Confidential.
The key to helping prospective students move past simple rankings is to make supplemental material easily accessable. Available and easily accessed, student blogs can be just the ticket to helping prospective students make decisions.