AS A HIGH school junior, I remember obediently plucking college guides off the bookshelf at Barnes and Nobles when spring rolled around. Most guides would tumble from ridiculous shelf-top heights and the giant books cataloguing all 3,000 universities in America would hit me square on the head. After a while, I began gauging how useful the books were by the bumps they left me with, and would discard any books that hit me too hard. When the Princeton Review: The Best 331 Colleges fell on my head, it did not instantly leave me dizzy and confused. Instead, upon reading it later, its description of the mysterious University of Virginia did.
I hadn't visited the University yet, but I knew that it was the school I most likely would attend. As I absorbed the blurb, though, I began to wonder if that was such a good choice. "Most students cite academics as the primary reason for choosing U.Va.," the book asserts. "The campus itself maintains its traditional beauty and continues to draw in top notch students." That was reassuring but the descriptions of the social life certainly were not. "You'd better believe beer and sports are a 'good thing' here ... It's hard to say that a group of over 10,000 students isn't diverse, but students do comment 'Conformity is big here, but it's mostly harmless.'"
These sweeping generalizations often are all high school students have to work with, so they had better be accurate. The book tries to be as unbiased as its nature permits, warning at the beginning that "Our survey is qualitative and anecdotal rather than quantitative and scientific," yet the way they frame descriptions can make a big difference. It's one thing to say, "Some students find the University self-segregated." It's another to begin with, "It's hard to say that a group of over 10,000 students isn't diverse...." Subtle emphasis like this can bias students before they visit a school and make them look for things that aren't there.
In terms of this conformity and self- segregation, though, it is safe to say that unfortunately the Princeton Review has not fabricated the situation. Yet they are still wrong because they have exaggerated it. The book also asserts that University students are "touchy about their reputation for 'snobbiness' and racism," but then cushions this blow by quoting one student who says, "The most important thing is that if you are willing to take some time and explain things, usually people will be intelligent and understand.'"
I was devastated by this seemingly harmless comment when I read it in high school. "What? Why do students have to explain anything? They don't owe each other explanations. And what are they explaining anyway? That they're from Texas and it's a lot hotter there? Or that they're gay and need support? Or that they're Muslim so need to fast during Ramadan?"
Ambiguous and ignorant comments like these only propagate the stereotype insinuated by the Princeton Review that University students are elitist or at least "touchy about their reputation for snobbiness."
Instead of providing unfettered information, the Princeton Review continues to generalize schools as one label. Muhelenburg College in Allentown, Pa. is labeled, "not culturally diverse and many of the happiest students here seem to fit a certain mold: white and from New Jersey." It sounds like no minorities would set foot at Muhelenburg, even if they're from Pennsylvania. While the book is trying to give students a succinct picture of what a school generally looks like, it forgets to remind students that one experience is not every experience. It ignores the fact that you can go to an enormous school like Penn State and not drink even though "A large percentage of students drink, especially on the weekends." A large percentage of students drinks everywhere: In fact 86 percent of fraternity residents and 44 percent of undergraduates in general binge drink, or consume 5 or more drinks in one sitting, according to a Harvard study cited in the introduction. You can also go to a school like Boston University, that receives not a single complaint about the seemingly ideal city social life, and have a horrible time.
As prospectives continue to roam Grounds, flanked cautiously by Mom and Dad, it's important that the outside information they receive about the University is accurate. It's imperative to have books like the Princeton Review because they have no affiliation to a certain school -- even Princeton, since the Review is associated with the College Board and not Princeton University -- and have no incentive to prejudice students. All they are doing is selling their book in the name of narrowing the college search to "The Best 331 Colleges." It's reassuring that they remind readers regarding their superlatives lists that "Rankings that are among the less flattering of the sixty-two categories are not lists of bad schools -- colleges on all of these lists are still among the best in the nation."
This book offers clearly skewed descriptions and listings. It makes me wonder if maybe other, larger books that might cause more harm when they fall off the shelf could be better because they would bruise my objectivity less.
(Diya Gullapalli is a Cavalier Daily associate editor.)
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