On two separate blog posts this week, we have received a lot of traffic and comments from prospective students about two of our student bloggers. One student felt that a blogger was "complaining" about all of the things she had to do and the involvement that she had ... while the other thought that a student's alleged poor grammar and spelling (which really wasn’t that bad to be honest) were a poor representation of our students.
Both respondents asked a similar question … “Is this how UNH students are?”
One interaction with a person does not represent their entire community … Just like we don’t like stereotypes around race, gender, social class, etc … You should not classify your entire view of a college campus on how you interact with one or two individuals. Our students are individuals just like you and me. Not everyone is going to agree on everything … and not everyone is going to read everything the same way. You can’t paint a community with such a broad brush.
Last week we had a parent of a prospective student e-mail the President of the university because she read on some college search website somewhere that no one at our school likes it here, and the admissions office gives them the completely wrong impression. The best part about it was … This was the parent of a student who has already decided to enroll for the fall semester!
Well, as the folks who represent the university to the general public (and because we care about the students and the impression we are giving them of course), we investigated it. After a couple hours of searching every college search site we could find (which there are A LOT of!), we could not find anything negative about the university. In fact, even on some of the smaller college search sites … all we found was positive feedback from visitors to campus, family members, and alumni! Just goes to show you … if you dig deep enough and look hard enough; you will find what you are looking for.
Every college has its peaks and its valleys … Every college has students that don’t like the food, or don’t like all of their professors, or don’t get involved and don’t like the social scene … The important thing is to find what YOU are looking for, and not classify one person’s negative experience as ALL student’s experiences.
