College selection: getting reliable information about colleges

Key points

• Information about a college is often unreliable.
• It is easier to get reliable information about hard-to-fudge metrics than about subjective experiences.
• The best source of reliable information about subjective experiences and for getting the inside scoop on easy-to-fudge metrics, as of now, appears to be College Confidential.

Information about what a college is like is often unreliable

You should heavily discount a lot of information that's out there about what a given college is like.

KEEP IN MIND: In general, information is usually not designed to be as accurate as possible. Think critically about the reliability of a given source.

Some reasons why information about what a given college is like is often misleading are:

Distortionary marketing

A college's promotional materials and admissions officers are generally distortionary: they exaggerate the college's positive qualities while omitting discussion of its negative qualities.

Unreliable college guidebooks

The Fiske Guide to Colleges 2014 describes its methodology:

Administrators were ... asked to recruit a cross section of students to complete another electronic questionnaire with questions relating to what it is like to be a student at their particular college or university.

College administrators are motivated to portray their universities favorably, and so one would expect them to recruit students who are most likely to say good things about their universities. So one can't trust the students' responses to be representative of what it's like to be a student at the college.

Current students and alumni being biased in favor of their schools

After somebody makes a choice, he or she generally wants to believe that he or she made the right choice. So people who have chosen to attend a college will often exaggerate its virtues and minimize its negative qualities.

Sour grapes

People who are rejected from a given college, or who don't apply because they know they can't get in, will sometimes have a "sour grapes" reaction, and be motivated to believe that the college isn't so good.