College Prowler Raises Concern of Administrators

College Prowler, a college-ranking site that uses student-reviews to formulate its grading, recently released its 2012 evaluation of Boston College, causing some students and administrators to scrutinize the site's assessment process.

The site, which also publishes its reviews in print, is different from other college review services in that it evaluates intangible aspects of campus life including nightlife, campus security strictness, and the attractiveness of the student body. For each aspect assessed, the site assigns an A through F grade, which is then compiled into a "report card" that is displayed on each school's homepage.

Most recently, BC received a "C+" in the categories of campus strictness, diversity, drug safety, and facilities.

"It's easy to give rankings to admission toughness, academics, etc., but I don't see how you can [give a grade] to something as subjective as nightlife or girls' and guys' attractiveness," said Austin Rainville, A&S '14, upon seeing BC's updated report card. "Who's making these rankings?"

College Prowler assesses each school based on a combination of student surveys and polls as well as data gathered from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a government – funded program that collects statistics from every university that offers federal student financial aid.

The surveys, which only require an e-mail address and basic contact information to fill out, asks the student to give a grade and write a brief review for each of the 20 criteria that the site appraises.

Because these responses are submitted online, the site cannot ensure that all of its surveys are written by BC students.

"Anyone could write a review; they don't require a BC e-mail address," said Molly McCarthy, a contributor to the site's evaluations and A&S '14, in an interview. "I answer them as honestly and objectively as I can, but there's no guarantee that everyone else is doing that."

McCarthy, who initially took the survey to be entered into one of College Prowler's monthly $1,000 scholarship contests, said she was concerned to write about topics that she was not familiar with.

"I felt so out of place writing something for some of them," she said. "It's so subjective it all really depends on an individual's experience."

Based on the information gathered in its surveys, College Prowler hires a student-author, typically an alumnus of the school, who evaluates this information and writes a synopsis on each of the criteria assessed.

According to the company's website, this student-oriented approach was the concept that company president Luke Skurman had in mind when he launched the website as a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon University in 2002. Based upon the frustrations that he faced during his own college selection process, Skurman wanted to create the site as a resource that would attempt to best capture the true essence of life on various college campuses.

Now, almost 10 years later, the site offers online reviews for over 7,000 universities and paperback books for almost 400 of them.

Because of the extent of this sort of information, sites such as College Prowler have raised concern among administrators that their schools could be perceived by prospective students in a way that does not necessarily accurately depict their communities. .

Patrick Rombalski, vice president for Student Affairs at BC, articulated his feelings towards sites like College Prowler that attempt to evaluate subjective aspects of student life.