The Web site of a national test preparation company, which was cited last year for questionable comments in its “Students Say” section about Mississippi State University, now projects a more favorable image of the school.
The comments were published on the Web site of The Princeton Review, which publishes information about colleges and universities throughout the nation for students trying to decide on a college.
“My opinion and those of the people I’ve talked with is that this paragraph this year does a much better job of capturing Mississippi State,” MSU vice president for student affairs Bill Kibler said.
Student Association President Jon David Cole echoed that sentiment. “The comments this year are a much more accurate statement of what it’s like to be a student at Mississippi State.”
“I thought last year’s portrayal of Mississippi State was misleading and disappointing, and certainly the results weren’t arrived at by a scientific means,” Cole said.
“This year’s results could clearly have been manufactured by the same means, but the results were more favorable,” he added.
The version of Students Say on the site in February 2005, cited “‘Deep South racial tension'” but quoted a student who “has friends of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.”
It also reported that “although only approximately 13 percent of the students go Greek, they reportedly ‘run the campus.'”
In the new version, a student is quoted as saying, “Every single day, if you just walk across campus once, you will see blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, homosexuals, heterosexuals, frat guys, sorority girls, goths, nerds, athletes, Army people and many eccentric-looking faculty members. They all have certain places on campus where they hang out, but everybody gets along with each other, too.”
Michael Palumbo, editor and director for student surveys at The Princeton Review, said the survey from which quotes for Students Say are drawn is ongoing. He said the Review, which completely rewrites the text at least once every three years and more often if the school asks, surveyed over 300 students at MSU during the 2004-2005 academic year.
Once the Review gets all the student surveys from a school for any given year, its staff looks for sentiments echoed by many students. “If it’s not really prevalent throughout the comments, we’re not going to print it.”
He said the Review sends the write-ups to the schools surveyed to check for accuracy. “Sometimes it’s admissions, sometimes it’s IR (Institutional Research), sometimes it’s the president’s office.”
The Review will not change results because administrators don’t like them. “If students say the food is bad and the university doesn’t like that, they’re not going to change it,” he said.
Kibler said the university encourages students who use publications such as The Princeton Review when deciding on a college to be cautious. “We encourage students that we talk to to do much more in-depth research.”
Students can take survey at survey.review.com and can read the Review’s write-up about MSU by searching for Mississippi State University at www.princetonreview.com