Reviewing the reviewers
In the most recent Princeton Review, IU received rankings that have students, faculty and administrators up in arms. While receiving a lower ranking for "party school" at No. 13 than the number one ranking it received in 2002, IU is ranked the No. 4 school where "students almost never study." Many at IU, including interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences David Zaret, believe that the rankings from the Princeton Review are not credible. IU Director of Media relations Larry MacIntyre has specifically criticized the survey's method of data collection. Generally, the view of these members of the IU community is correct. The Princeton Review's finding is a grossly simplistic portrayal of a university that is wide-reaching and diverse. It is impossible to tell whether or not students study less frequently at IU than other major universities when only about 300 surveys are tallied from each campus. Somewhere in the range of 38,000 students attend IU, and a test group of such a small magnitude (about 0.8 percent of the student body) yields results that should not be taken as serious science.
