Student reviews are posts or blogs written by college students. Students seriously contemplating enrolling and attending a college or university should read these commentaries; however, it must be remembered that these are commentaries, not hard facts about the institution. Look for an overview of the institution including its history and trends summarizing the reviews or graphing or charting many students’ comments. If these are absent, do your own summaries or even plot your own graphs or charts. An example graph is shown below, chosen arbitrarily from the website called “Online Degree Reviews.” (To be changed to picture of graph)
Summary of Reviews:
Category Score (0 worst / 10 best)
Overall 7.3
Materials 7.1
Teachers 6.1
Instruction 7.1
Support 7.3
Value 8.0
Technology 8.1
Then, and most importantly, compare reviews between and among several institutions, especially your top two to five choices. You, you parents, or the entity funding your scholarship will be spending tens of thousands of dollars for a two year degree and hundreds of thousands of dollars for a four-year or higher degree. So make your choice wisely.
The Most Valuable Reviews
By far, the most valuable student reviews are those from students who have attended the institution for three or more years, who will usually be juniors or seniors and will be at least 21 to 22 years of age, but often much older. You will find few of these will have totally negative comments; and many comments will be well thought out and written clearly. Unfortunately, these will often be few in number; so you may have to wade through many reviews, unless they are easily identified as positive or negative, as those on the website Online Degree Reviews.
The Least Valuable Reviews
Conversely, the least valuable student reviews will be those from very disgruntled students who have attended for less than a semester or two, or less than one full academic year. Also, these reviews are often poorly worded, include profanities (if the institution or website editor allows them) and will be completely devoid of positive comments. Such reviews should not be completely dismissed; however, they should not be the sole or deciding factor about whether or not to attend.
Even the very best schools have students who give poor reviews. So expect to read them and use your best judgement, together with the above guidelines, as you evaluate their validity.
Those Most Likely to Write a Review
As you probably have guessed from the above text, most students providing a student review for any college have been very disenchanted with the institution. They feel Admissions mislead them, Financial Aid was not cooperative as they applied to get easy scholarships, instructors cannot teach and the Administrators are just out to cheat them out of their hard earned or borrowed dollars. They are thousands in debt and have little or nothing to show for it. In actuality, most have really not tried academically, have held a grudge against specific individuals and have no real passion for their chosen field of study.
Surprisingly, a number of colleges and universities do allow many extremely negative reviews to be published on their websites. I actually applaud these institutions for being willing to publish such comments and allowing the institution and the majority of its students (who often do not even take the time to write a review), faculty, staff and administrators speak for themselves.
Therefore, whenever possible actually visit the college or university well before enrolling; and if it is an online college or university, call or email a number of students enrolled in your degree program of interest. First hand direct contact with current students is invaluable. Communicate with them directly whenever possible.
Your comments and questions are most appreciated. Thank you for reading!