For those of you who are ranking savvy, you are probably well aware of Wash U’s academic prowess as rated by the infamous U.S. News & World Report. But what you may not know is that Wash U is atop the rankings in what may be an unsuspecting category in being named the fifth most stressed university. It probably shouldn’t come as a total surprise. At Wash U, it seems like nearly everyone can rattle off the activities they are involved in in over two hands. And then there’s that little thing called class and studying which can sometimes get lost in the shuffle.
Just today, while under a siege of stress myself, I walked into Whisper’s – neither to schmooze with friends nor to grab a drink—but to observe the general Whisper’s population. Yes, it’s finals season, and yes, nearly everyone was plugged into a laptop (probably Facebook stalking for all I know), but despite their looming deadlines, nearly everyone looked at ease. But maybe this is just the atmosphere that Whisper’s breeds. A cursory glance into the cramped cubicles on the lower levels, or on the second or third floors are enough to send me into a distressed frenzy. One sophomore, whom all but set up camp in Whispers, admitted in between bites of yogurt-covered pretzels that he probably should be more stressed than he actually was. His friend, a freshman, chimed in, “people at Wash U need to realize that there’s more life than getting a 4.0.”
While I would be quick to agree that Wash U errs on the side of stress, The Daily Beast’s methodology seems highly skewed to me. According to the website, the determining factors were “tuition costs, overall competitiveness, crime, acceptance rate, and the difficulty of the school’s engineering program.” Really? Those are the most important factors? What about considering subjective reports from the students—such as quality of life, or overall happiness? It seems pretty flawed to directly correlate crime and, say, the difficult of the engineering program with stress. Other programs surely pose comparable amount of stress—plus, these rankings exclude schools without engineering programs. The number of campus wide suicides was not included in the rankings, which is undeniably a red flag for high stress. So, let’s take a look at the top 5. Columbia’s first, then Stanford, followed by Harvard, UPenn, and then us. UChicago and MIT came after Wash U. If you break down Wash U’s ranking, you’ll see it looks like this:
Tuition rank:4th Acceptance rate rank: 17th Competitiveness rank: 14th Engineering rank: 36th Crime rank: 3rd
Apparently, the combination of our steep tuition and suppose high crime solidify Wash U’s stress ranking. This seems almost laughable to me; should these factors really be how we evaluate the so called “most stressed colleges?” In reality, these stress rankings scream bogus to me, just like all the other rankings out there—you have to take them with a grain of salt.
What do you think about Wash U being one of the most stressed schools? Is this a scarily accurate ranking or is it just another ranking Wash U has to add to its resume?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-04-10/from-stanford-to-yale-to-columbia-the-daily-beast-ranks-the-most-stressful-college-campuses/