<p>dshinka,</p>
<p>The rules have changed. Some people post web sites and it is OK. Others post other college web sites and they get reprimanded. So despite the number of posts I have, yes, it seems that that particular policy is still unclear to me… 
</p>
<p>The happiest college students are those who enter college as happy people–people who know how to make friends, find activities that interest them, are enthusiastic about learning, have learned how to take advantage of opportunities. Miserable, negative people do not magically become optimistic, energetic, successful people because simply because they enroll in a university, nor do energetic, ambitious, optimistic people become whiny losers because they find themselves at a less than ideal university. Much depends on who and what you are, not where you are.</p>
<p>chaosakita-- the Princeton Review list changes every year…not exactly sure which year your link provided…maybe 2007? Assuming so, here’s PR’s lists as I could find them. New one due out in the next few weeks I believe (2010).</p>
<p>2007 [10</a> Colleges with the Happiest Students - MSN Encarta](<a href=“http://encarta.msn.com/college_article_happystudents/with_the_happiest_students.html]10”>http://encarta.msn.com/college_article_happystudents/with_the_happiest_students.html)
<p>2008 [Top</a> 10 Schools with the Happiest Students - MSN Encarta](<a href=“http://spotlight.encarta.msn.com/features/encnet_departments_college_default_article_10schoolshappieststudents08.html]Top”>http://spotlight.encarta.msn.com/features/encnet_departments_college_default_article_10schoolshappieststudents08.html)
<p>2009 (the latest version as of this posting date) [Latest</a> College Rankings List The Greenest - The Early Show - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/29/earlyshow/living/parenting/main4301858.shtml?source=RSS&attr=HOME_4301858]Latest”>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/29/earlyshow/living/parenting/main4301858.shtml?source=RSS&attr=HOME_4301858)
<p>So, interestingly, the schools that hit the top 10 all 3 years are:
Stanford
Brown
College of NJ</p>
<p>Putting on my cynical hat, I suspect there is ample opportunity for schools to ‘get out the vote’ to help their cause.</p>
<p>I’ll try:</p>
<p>[The</a> Happy Colleges | InsideCollege.com](<a href=“The Best College Rankings and Lists | Inside College | CollegeXpress”>The Best College Rankings and Lists | Inside College | CollegeXpress)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>More true at smaller school than large schools, all I can say is that I’ve never taken part in the Princeton Review despite the fact that I worked closely with admissions for various things while at Brown (mostly tour/info session related) and that I’ve even filled out the Fiske forms for Brown. I don’t think it’s all that easy to game the system, just something that can be highly variable at some schools based on time of year, certain recent events, size and who is sampled, etc.</p>
<p>If anything, I’d say that your list just shows that the PR may only be valid for those three schools since they’re consistently up there (and Brown’s never dropped from top 3 ;)).</p>
<p>I agree with Midmo, your own happiness is portable. So is your own perspective on social and academic satisfaction, and your instinct for finding those things regardless of circumstance.</p>
<p>Why are Brunonians so gosh darn happy?</p>
<p>What happened at Whitman? They went from #2 in 2007, to #1 in 2008, to falling out of the top 10 in 2009. Maybe a really happy Class of 2008 graduated and was replaced by a glum Class of 2012?</p>
<p>Brown seems to be the most consistently happy, with a 3-year average of 2.33.</p>
<p>All silliness, of course, but fun. Our student tour guide at Brown expressed great bewilderment when told about the PR survey. Said he was quite happy himself as were most of the people who knew at Brown; but so were most of the people he knew at other colleges.</p>
<p>ok let me explain, Princeton Review surveys students on a 3 year rotation. That means Brown gets surveyed every 3 years.</p>
<p>Therefore my prediction is that Brown might drop out of the list in the next book. If they were on the list 2007,2008,2009 that might just mean that they were surveyed in 2007 and got very good results. If they are still on the list 4 years in a row, that says something though.</p>
<p>The point are, there are many schools with happy students, more than 20 haha
The fact that a school isn’t on the “happiest student” list doesn’t mean that you will be depressed there, as long as you don’t end up on the “least happiest” list haha</p>
<p>pierre-- Brown was number 1 when I was applying in 2004-2005, so maybe we will drop out after this year, but we’ve had those numbers for at least two of the three-year cycles then.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m no sure “reasonably satisfied” is the same thing as “happy,” and in any event “nearly 96%” freshman retention (actually 95.5% according to US News) is not a particularly stellar score for a top national university.</p>
<p>Still, you may be onto something. Using freshman retention as a proxy for student satisfaction, the ranking among US News top 50 national universities is as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li>Yale 98.5</li>
<li>Princeton 98.0</li>
<li>MIT 98.0</li>
<li>Stanford 98.0</li>
<li>Penn 98.0</li>
<li>Dartmouth 98.0</li>
<li>Caltech 97.8</li>
<li>Columbia 97.8</li>
<li>Notre Dame 97.8</li>
<li>Brown 97.5</li>
<li>Harvard 97.2</li>
<li>U Chicago 97.2</li>
<li>Northwestern 97.0</li>
<li>WUSTL 97.0</li>
<li>Rice 97.0</li>
<li>Georgetown 97.0</li>
<li>UCLA 97.0</li>
<li>UC Berkeley 96.8</li>
<li>UVA 96.8</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins 96.5</li>
<li>Duke 96.5</li>
<li>UNC Chapel Hill 96.2</li>
<li>Cornell 96.0</li>
<li>Michigan 96.0</li>
<li>Southern Cal 95.8</li>
<li>Vanderbilt 95.5</li>
<li>Tufts 95.5</li>
<li>Boston College 95.5</li>
<li>William & Mary 95.0</li>
<li>Brandeis 94.5</li>
<li>Emory 94.2</li>
<li>UCSD 94.2</li>
<li>U Rochester 94.2</li>
<li>U Florida 94.2</li>
<li>Wake Forest 94.0</li>
<li>Lehigh 94.0</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon 93.8</li>
<li>UCI 93.5</li>
<li>Penn State 93.5</li>
<li>Wisconsin-Madison 93.2</li>
<li>U Texas 92.8</li>
<li>U Washington 92.5</li>
<li>NYU 92.2</li>
<li>UIUC 92.2</li>
<li>RPI 92.2</li>
<li>Georgia Tech 92.0</li>
<li>Case Western 91.0</li>
<li>UCSB 90.5</li>
<li>UC Davis 90.2</li>
<li>Yeshiva 88.0</li>
</ol>
<p>I’d be worried about schools at the lower end of this scale. If 1 in 10, 1 in 11, or 1 in 12 freshmen don’t return for their sophomore year, it could be a sign of trouble.</p>
<p>That list is biased towards colleges with richer students though. Many students drop out because they have to work.</p>
<p>Same exercise for LACS (fewer schools): highest freshman retention rate as proxy for “most satisfied”:</p>
<ol>
<li>Pomona 99.5</li>
<li>Bowdoin 98.2</li>
<li>Amherst 97.2</li>
<li>Williams 97.2</li>
<li>Carleton 97.0</li>
<li>Swarthmore 96.2</li>
<li>Haverford 96.2</li>
<li>Claremont-McKenna 95.8</li>
<li>Davidson 95.5</li>
<li>Vassar 95.5</li>
<li>Barnard 95.5</li>
<li>Middlebury 95.2</li>
<li>Wesleyan 95.2</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd 95.2</li>
<li>Bucknell 95.0</li>
<li>Holy Cross 95.0</li>
<li>Wellesley 94.8</li>
<li>Washington & Lee 94.5</li>
<li>Bates 94.5</li>
<li>Whitman 94.0</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr 93.8</li>
<li>Lafayette 93.8</li>
<li>Colgate 93.5</li>
<li>Kenyon 93.5</li>
<li>Oberlin 93.2</li>
<li>Colby 93.2</li>
<li>Macalester 93.2</li>
<li>Colorado College 93.2</li>
<li>Mt. Holyoke 93.0</li>
<li>Skidmore 93.0</li>
<li>St. Olaf 93.0</li>
<li>Grinnell 92.8</li>
<li>Hamilton 92.5</li>
<li>Furman 92.2</li>
<li>Union 92.2</li>
<li>Trinity 91.5</li>
<li>Occidental 91.5</li>
<li>Franklin & Marshall 91.5</li>
<li>Connecticut College 91.2</li>
<li>Centre College 91.2</li>
<li>Gettysburg 91.2</li>
<li>U Richmond 91.0</li>
<li>Dickinson 91.0</li>
<li>Smith 90.2</li>
<li>Scripps 90.2</li>
<li>DePauw 90.2</li>
<li>Sewanee 88.8</li>
<li>Bard 88.2</li>
</ol>
<p>Hmmm . . . Ir appears that despite their reputation was warm, inviting, intimate places, LACs as a group have a bigger problem with freshman retention than do research universities. Pomona and Bowdoin come out very strong, however, and in general the top 10 or 12 LACs do pretty well.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think it’s probably right that many public universities don’t do as well on this measure because some of their students are compelled to take time off to work for financial reasons. In that light, the strong showing of the top publics like UCLA, UVA, UC Berkeley, UNC Chapel Hill, and Michigan is rather impressive. These schools are very competitive with the top private universities on this measure, and do considerably better than many LACs (better than all but 7 LACs, actually) and even some highly regarded private universities (e.g., Vanderbilt, Tufts, Boston College, Brandeis, Emory, Carnegie-Mellon, NYU, all ranking below the top 5 publics).</p>
<p>Those universities get a lot of OOS students who are able to pay the higher tuition, and are probably more likely to attract higher-income studen from the state as as well.</p>
<p>
That would make much more sense if Berkeley and UCLA didn’t have by far the highest number of Pell Grant recipients (30% and 34% !!!) in the country, with the other top publics not too far behind.</p>
<p>If you’re not familiar with Pell Grants, virtually all recipients earn less than $40K, and more than half earn less than $20K.</p>
<p>bclintonk, i think if you bracket out the Ivy League universities (let’s face it, what parent is going to allow their kid to drop out of HYP?), you’ll find that the LAC and research uni retention rates pretty much line up against each other.</p>
<p>Wait a minute bclintonk, something’s missing. The United States Military Academy has a retention rate of 99%. Those plebes are obviously happy, happy, happy!</p>
<p>Or the military fudges the numbers to make it appear that it is a happy place to make sure potential recruits aren’t scared off. ;)</p>
<p>From what I have seen, it seems that people going to LACs tend to be the happiest because they form the tightest communities. However, they all wanted to be at a LAC to begin with for the other things they offer as well (prof attention, D3 sports)</p>
<p>I really like the close bonds formed with peers, but I am not 100% sure that a LAC is for me. Could this lead to disaster? I am trying to decide where I will apply early.</p>