The Princeton Review states AU students' happiness low...again

For the second year in a row, the Princeton Review ranked Alfred University 19th in the nation in the category "Least Happy Students." This fact makes us very sad. We love Alfred University and cannot see why Alfred is 19th--or even in the Top 50. We wanted to examine the practical reasons why we are low on the totem pole and to also delve a little deeper into what the Princeton Review doesn’t say about Alfred University students.

Like the students, the University should not be happy with this result. Any time your school is ranked in the Top 20 of a less than desirable category means that there is something wrong.

Let’s blame the University! It’s their responsibility to entertain us, right? It’s their job to keep us happy. Hold on a second, before we throw all of the blame on the University, let's take a look at what the Princeton Review doesn’t tell us up front. What are our students unhappy with? Are they really unhappy?

The Princeton Review explains that “Least Happy Campus” is under the category “Quality of Life.” The factors that constitute “Quality of Life” include: overall happiness, beauty, safety and location of the campus, comfort of dorms, quality of food, ease of getting around campus and dealing with administrators, friendliness of fellow students, interaction of different student types and quality of the school's relationship with the local community. We probably didn't rank extremely low in every one of these categories, but examining these areas is a start.

Despite this poor ranking, we do have some things to be happy about regarding this year's Princeton Review.

We are listed as one of the Top 20 schools in the Northeast and we have the 13th Best College Radio Station. Go WALF! It’s a shameless plug from WALF’s general manager (Thomas Fleming), we know, but the point is that there are some bright spots that the Review found, and there are countless more that it didn't.

AU has always been an institution where students are empowered and encouraged to be leaders. Almost any dream is within reach with enough hard work, dedication and devotion to the end product, making the University a better place to go to college.

We were able to reach AU President Charlie Edmondson for comment. He remarked that the Princeton Review does not have “valid survey methods” because of small sample sizes and the failure of the Review to reach out to students.

The Review relies on students taking the online poll themselves instead of reaching out and making the effort to contact the students. Despite these poor survey methods, Edmondson is concerned with the findings, even if they came from a minority of AU students. He also said he found it very interesting that 12 out of 20 of the “Least Happy Students" campuses were in the Northeast, and 7 of those 12 were in New York.

One hypothesis for this pattern is that the Northeast is known for its climate of dark, long winters.

The isolated, rural setting of AU might also have something to do with the ranking, but with that thought in mind, how did New York University end up at No. 5? NYU is about as urban as you can get.

Edmondson said the Review “does not help us constructively address problems having to do with student unhappiness” and added that we are never really sure why they found what they found. Edmondson's main message was that the Princeton Review findings can be taken with a grain of salt, but he is concerned if students are unhappy.

So, should we be worried about what some ranking system with obscure methods says?

If students really are unhappy on this campus, we think we, as a student body, have to place a large amount of the blame on ourselves, or on the few students who filled out a survey on http://www.princetonreview.com/.

We suggest that students go to the Princeton Review Web site, take the survey, and tell the Review that we are not just a campus where all the “freaks” in high school escaped to, as one student wrote in the Princeton Review “What Students Say” section.

Not only can AU students take advantage of the resources the University offers, but they can also take a little time to make this University seem just a bit happier in the 2011 edition of the Princeton Review.