Grace Isford
By Grace Isford
The college hype machine is overwhelming. So I decided to bypass the sugar-coated information of tour guides, review books and even adults seeking to help — and instead harness social media to slice through the conventional wisdom.
As a tour guide at my high school, I know that tours convey only surface information. Adults exacerbate the problem by telling students which schools are best despite having limited information and relying primarily on institutions’ reputations. Twitter is a good way to get a sense of what the general public thinks about a particular topic. So I searched tweets about a number of well-known schools and divided the results into three general categories: positive, negative and neutral.
The results were surprising.
I compiled a pool of 100 unique tweets from public personal accounts mentioning each university.
The University of Chicago is often said to be a school “where fun goes to die.” Yet my College Twitter Happiness Index registered 70 percent happy for the university. I found a similarly unexpected outcome at Cornell University, which has a reputation for exceedingly pressured students and was the subject of media attention in 2010 for student suicides. Yet my calculations pegged the school’s happiness index at a robust 58 percent. My calculations for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a school often stereotyped to have a less-than-vibrant social life, found the student happiness index to be 67 percent. Teenagers shouldn’t let the influence of the college hype machine dictate where they apply. It’s better to make decisions based on where students actually are happiest. Party on! WP-BLOOMBERGBy Grace Isford
The college hype machine is overwhelming. So I decided to bypass the sugar-coated information of tour guides, review books and even adults seeking to help — and instead harness social media to slice through the conventional wisdom.
As a tour guide at my high school, I know that tours convey only surface information. Adults exacerbate the problem by telling students which schools are best despite having limited information and relying primarily on institutions’ reputations. Twitter is a good way to get a sense of what the general public thinks about a particular topic. So I searched tweets about a number of well-known schools and divided the results into three general categories: positive, negative and neutral.
The results were surprising.
I compiled a pool of 100 unique tweets from public personal accounts mentioning each university.
The University of Chicago is often said to be a school “where fun goes to die.” Yet my College Twitter Happiness Index registered 70 percent happy for the university. I found a similarly unexpected outcome at Cornell University, which has a reputation for exceedingly pressured students and was the subject of media attention in 2010 for student suicides. Yet my calculations pegged the school’s happiness index at a robust 58 percent. My calculations for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a school often stereotyped to have a less-than-vibrant social life, found the student happiness index to be 67 percent. Teenagers shouldn’t let the influence of the college hype machine dictate where they apply. It’s better to make decisions based on where students actually are happiest. Party on! WP-BLOOMBERG
