<p>The second part of this project was to see which schools had the “happiest” and “most satisfied” students and which ones did not. Once again, 1,500 surveys were sent out and completed, but to different students. All students surveyed were freshmen and were, on average, one month away from completing their freshman year. Students were asked to rate, on a scale from 1 to 10 how satisfied they were with the campus, their professors, the fellow students, the dorms, the food, the social scene, the surrounding area, the academics, and the administration. HERE ARE THE RESULTS:</p>
<li>University of Georgia</li>
<li>University of Wisconsin - Madison</li>
<li>UC - Santa Barbara</li>
<li>UCLA and University of Michigan (tie)</li>
<li>Tulane University</li>
<li>University of Texas - Austin</li>
<li>Stanford University</li>
<li>UNC Chapel Hill</li>
<li>University of Florida</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins University</li>
<li>UC Berkeley</li>
<li>UVA</li>
<li>Grinnell College</li>
<li>Oberlin College</li>
<li>Boston University</li>
<li>Macalester College</li>
<li>Wesleyan University (CT)</li>
<li>Washington University in St. Louis</li>
<li>Pomona College</li>
<li>Emory University</li>
<li>Wellesley College</li>
<li>Carleton College</li>
<li>Rice University</li>
<li>Colby College</li>
<li>Williams College</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Trinity College</li>
<li>Georgetown University</li>
<li>Kenyon College</li>
<li>Bard College</li>
<li>Bates</li>
<li>Barnard College</li>
<li>Tufts University</li>
<li>Colgate University</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon University</li>
<li>Vanderbilt University</li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania</li>
<li>Brown University</li>
<li>Northwestern University</li>
<li>Columbia University</li>
<li>Amherst College</li>
<li>University of Chicago</li>
<li>Trinity College </li>
<li>NYU</li>
<li>Columbia University and Yale University (tie)</li>
<li>Princeton University </li>
<li>Swarthmore College</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Harvard University </li>
<li>Cornell University </li>
</ol>
<p>This component of the project has a clear trend: students at larger, state schools seem to be happier.</p>
<p>Well nothing was WRONG with it, but the reults are based on two COMPLETELY different surveys. One was to see how people were satisfied in dealing with an admissions office, while one surveyed how happy (or unhappy) people were after completing nearly a year at a school.</p>
<p>a friend of mine, a current grad student at MIT, conducted two big research projects - one to determine which admissions offices were the best to work with, and one to determine which schools had the most satisfied students. each survey relied upon answers from 1,500 students.</p>
<p>kinda makes me regret not applying to UCSB. i better get into UCLA or CAL. interesting how georgia comes up first, i’d expect everyone to love the ivies or ‘dream schools’</p>
<p>I can understand Georgia or any of those Southern California schools. I means what’s there not to like about living at the beach (UCSB) or in Westwood, home of movie premiere and a quick bus ride to the Santa Monica Pier (UCLA). It’s hard not to be happy when the weather’s that good. I’m really impressed by U of Wisconsin and Michigan though. Congrats on the administration and students that make those schools a great place to be.</p>
<p>i for one find these results suspect. I fail to believe that uga students are happier than unc. or uva. these results don’t make sense. and tulane is begging for students and arent’ getting them so the rankings don’t seem realistic.</p>
<p>As a mother, I’m sure you that are quite well aware of the fact that reality often does NOT meet thoughts, assummptions, or personal opinions. For our project(s), we used as scientific of methods as possible, and the results are the results. Doubt all you want, but you have the information in front of you. Have you ever been a student at UGA, UVa, or Chapel Hill?</p>
<p>Only 1 Ivy in the Top 35??? Go Big Green. Sounds like a wake up call to the Ivy administrations that the natives aren’t entirely happy. Also a wake-up call to potential applicants. There are a lot of happy places out there that might be a better place to spend four years. Prestige ain’t everything. </p>
<p>As for my surprises, a few caught my eye on the downside-Colgate (#34) and Vanderbilt (#36). If you’d asked me where are the happiest students, I would have guessed that both of these would be in the Top 10. As for a positive surprise, I know that the students at Tulane (# 5) are stoked to be there and proud of their school and it’s nice to see a survey reflecting this. </p>
<p>How large was the sample at each college and did it differ according to the size of the enrollment? You really should post the detail backing your results so that folks can judge how robustly supported your conclusions are. But if you do this, expect the lower ranked schools to find dozens of reasons why your methodolgy is flawed. :p</p>
<p>Some very noteworthy absences from the list. What does this mean??</p>
<p>National Universities:
Duke, Notre Dame, USC, Wake Forest, Lehigh, Brandeis, W&M, U Rochester, Georgia Tech, Boston College, UCSD, U Illinois, Case Western, U Washington, UC Davis, Rensselaer, UC Irvine, Penn State, Syracuse and others</p>
<p>LACs
Middlebury, Bowdoin, Davidson, Haverford, Claremont McKenna, Vassar, Harvey Mudd, W&L, Smith, Hamilton and others.</p>
<p>After looking at the names above, I am very surprised that many of these were not in the Top 50. Even more than before, I am interested to see the data and why schools that have reputations for very happy students (Duke, Notre Dame, etc) did not make the list.</p>
<p>Students at northeastern schools think pessimism/synicism are correlates of intelligence, and therefore respond to any inquiry pessimistically. They’re not really that depressed… it’s all an affectation. Close up of Woody Allen…</p>