Office of the President, Shirley Strum Kenny

Online commentaries from President Shirley Strum Kenny

SPEAKING OF ...
Campus Reviews

College rankings by US News and World Report and The Princeton Review have just appeared again, and as usual they are anything but informative.

What I find as irksome as the rankings themselves is the way they are misused by other publications. Example Number One: The Princeton Review, in a volume listing the top 366 colleges in the country (yes, the good colleges according to their lights, the top eight per cent). For as long as I can remember, the editors have tagged Stony Brook as having a campus that is "tiny, unsightly, or both." Now you can disagree about the aesthetics of the landscaping, and there was a long period when the campus was truly ugly, but no one can claim it is "tiny." We have asked them year after year to correct this annually repeated error; we have invited them to campus to see for themselves. But all to no avail.

This year we got quite a good review. To quote a bit (this is part of one of my favorite paragraphs, but it gives the general tenor of the review):

Stony Brook University "is a great place for ambitious, focused students who actually want to learn something" at a "great research university in which classes are challenging and interesting." … Students in the science and tech majors describe the school as "challenging but worth it," noting that "the sciences here are amazing. Now that I'm interviewing for medical schools, I'm seeing just how highly they think of Stony Brook's undergraduate science programs!"

There are some grumbles too, but none that are shocking, none that you wouldn't expect in any comparable institution-burdensome paperwork, desire for more local night life, "occasionally getting a professor who does not speak English well." But the New York Post picked up one of the lists The Princeton Review compiles to grab headlines, which included us as leading in having the "least happy students," with of course no evidence given.

Needless to say, I had calls from everyone who reads the Post.

We did very well in US News and World Report. We are listed in the top 100 national universities and the top 50 public institutions. We are specifically mentioned as outstanding for undergraduate research, along with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and some others. US News at least makes a stab at scientific examination of the quality of institutions, but it is largely based on reputational evaluations, and there is a definite lag-time between academic excellence and reputation.

But the proof of where we stand is in the facts. If you want to know about Stony Brook's vitality and value, look at the actual data: over the last decade, applications have increased by 80 per cent, enrollments have grown by 30 per cent, SAT scores have risen by more than 100 points, and research dollars have almost doubled. A remarkable set of accomplishments.

That data is the real way to evaluate Stony Brook-we are, as more and more people realize, Red Hot!

Shirley.Kenny@stonybrook.edu