Capturing a culture

Info packets, emails, invitations and websites beckon you to the different colleges, touting unparalleled research opportunities, strong undergraduate focus, incredible study-abroad programs, substantial grant-based financial aid and award-winning faculty. But when it comes to enticing accepted students to matriculate, too often colleges don’t provide the right information.

When I made my college decision, I cared less about each place’s research opportunities for freshmen than I cared about the overall atmosphere. What do people do on weekends? Where do friends hang out? What’s school spirit like? After all, college would be my first home away from home, the center of my life for the next four years, the place where I would meet many lifelong friends.

But what I found was a carefully constructed view of campus life. Instead of trying to explain the nuances of what makes College X unique — both good and bad — universities gloss over any imperfections and quantify every benefit until the spirit of each campus is lost in a monochrome of statistics. Yale shares our 6:1 student-faculty ratio; Harvard’s students also come from all 50 states; Columbia’s average aid grant is $38,000 as well. Among the Ivies and beyond, the statistics game washes out the vibrancy of a school’s campus culture. The numbers can be an important factor in deciding the college to attend, but from my own experience they look similar enough to become essentially meaningless.

I felt that in selling themselves to potential students, universities left out many details that form the full, honest picture of their campus. Princeton is no exception. The info packets don’t touch on grade deflation; they skim over eating clubs; they neglect to mention McCosh-ing. The insinuation is that these messy, honest aspects of Princeton can’t be explained — they have to be experienced. While neglecting to mention negatives is a staple of any product’s sales campaign, choosing which college to attend is not a normal sale. It is a decision that will affect the matriculator’s daily life for the next four years. Colleges should not be happy to simply attract the most students but should want to attract the students who will be the most happy at their institution given all of its quirks.

The perfected image of the University leaves something to be desired: openness. It’s not as if admitting that some undergraduates drink will surprise anyone or make people think Princetonians party harder. Instead, a balanced and truthful discussion of such ‘flavorful campus activities’ ensures that prefrosh can make more informed decisions about universities. Since most of our time at Princeton will be spent outside the classroom, shouldn’t more attention be given to the social aspects of student life?

Perhaps the University is worried that mentioning social realities or negative academic experiences would be releasing control over the type of image they send out to newly accepted students. But neglecting to give pamphlet time to such topics can actually lead negative opinions of the University to be formed more easily as accepted students rely on rumors and stereotypes to fill in gaps in information. When I was accepted to Princeton, one family friend warned me that grade deflation meant only 10 percent of students get A’s. The University had no chance to explain the merits and clear up confusion.

This argument equally applies to the eating clubs. Prior to coming to campus, I imagined the clubs to be some sort of cross between Greek life and secret societies where debauchery and rituals reign. Knowing that undergraduates have access to beer, but not hard liquor, in a club guarded by bouncers with a campus requirement to ‘McCosh’ anyone who needs help seems like a mellow image in comparison. My parents may be the exception to the rule, but such information would have lessened their anxiety about alcohol on campus. Instead of keeping quiet about what goes on in the eating clubs, a frank explanation would actually allow the University to better control how such aspects of student life are presented instead of letting Google searches, rumors and stereotypes fill in the blanks left by the University’s statistics.

I understand why the University avoids certain topics, and I have no magic formula for changing the ‘statistics quo.’ But I also know that when I was choosing which college to attend, I’d have preferred a messy, intangible, honest picture of the University than a group of sterilized statistics. After all, college is not just a decision about the best learning experience but also the best living experience. In playing the number game it becomes too easy to quantify the ways in which Princeton is an exemplary institution rather than to qualify exactly why it is a home.