‘The 50 Most Stressful Colleges’: Stanford Students, Staff Respond
Posted by meredith on 04-15-2010
Today’s Ypulse Youth Advisory Board post comes from Raymond Braun in response to “The 50 Most Stressful Colleges” rankings recently put out by The Daily Beast.
As a current Stanford student, Raymond, his fellow students and campus administrators had an understandably strong response to the university getting singled out as #1 (see below), but I wondered if any Ypulse Readers were struck by the list quantifying an issue as highly relative (and sensitive) as the state of emotional health on campus? Feel free to leave your thoughts in comments…. and remember you can communicate directly with any member of the Ypulse Youth Advisory Board by emailing them at youthadvisoryboard at ypulse.com.
‘The 50 Most Stressful Colleges’: Stanford Students, Staff Respond
The Daily Beast recently released its rankings of the “The 50 Most Stressful Colleges in America” and I, like many of my fellow students, was shocked and confused to learn that Stanford University had been misrepresented as the #1 most stressful college in America. A sophomore at Stanford, I feel incredibly lucky to attend a school that places a premium on student happiness and well-being. I also had to wonder how The Daily Beast drew that conclusion while simultaneously ranking Stanford as the #7 Happiest School in America?
On a broader scale, I was troubled by The Daily Beast’s trivialization of the very important issue of mental health and well-being among college students. This issue is one that should certainly be discussed, debated and taken into consideration when selecting a university. The way The Daily Beast handled the topic, however, upset many members of the Stanford community — including me — who felt the methods for quantifying the very personal and somewhat vague concept of “stress” were totally off base and potentially misleading for prospective students.
That said, I do hope these rankings will spark discussion on how to appropriately and productively identify and reduce stress levels on college campus. For now, here are a few reactions to The Daily Beast’s rankings from Stanford that I believe accurately reflect why many members of the Stanford community felt our school, and perhaps others who made the list, felt misrepresented:
Carole Pertofsky, Director of Health Promotion Services at Stanford’s Vaden Health Center, and Co-Instructor, “The Pursuit of Health and Happiness”
“As a faculty and staff member, with strong and significant connections to both undergraduate and graduate students, I take strong issue with [The Daily Beast] article titling Stanford as the #1 most stressful college in America. Not only is [the] article patently absurd sensationalism, based on over-pathologizing Stanford students, but it also relies on linking secondary and very puzzling measures of student life with assessments of mental health.
To seriously tackle such an article with integrity requires that you go to the primary sources. The source would be the National College Health Assessment. This assessment reveals that, although stress is a significant concern for the vast majority of United States campuses, compared to all other campuses, and to peer institutions, Stanford students experience more positive measures of well being better than most. We also have highest graduation rates, greatest number of student groups, and other secondary measures.
Anecdotally, I can attest to the reality that Stanford students face high expectations in a demanding academic environment, and their aspirations include tackling leadership challenges on local, national and global issues. As opposed to being riddled with stress and anxiety, as The Daily Beast inaccurately portrayed, the majority of our students are optimistic, bold, and visionary. Most express high levels of positive emotion, appreciation and gratitude for the opportunity to make a positive difference. In summary, The Daily Beast’s conclusion is both fatuous and inaccurate journalism.”
Steven Crane, Stanford Class of 2011:
“Are you kidding me? Measuring “stress” by tuition, without actually looking at what people end up paying by taking into account financial aid? None of these factors look at the ACTUAL experience of students and whether they are stressed or not. This just illuminates one metric for the possibility of a stressful experience, and takes no account of how these schools may have worked on combating stress and bolstering the mental health of their student populations.”
Firas Abuzaid, Stanford Class of 2013:
I really don’t put a lot of stock in these rankings for the following reasons:
1) 55% of their evaluation scheme is based on another source’s rankings (US News and World Report). Clearly, a diverse set of sources needs to be used in compiling these rankings simply for the sake of thoroughness.
2) The article talks about how students who major in Science and Engineering are generally more stressed, which I believe is questionable. The issue of whether engineering rigor of the University contributes to the stress level of the University is a point worth debating on its own. Regardless, though, the way that engineering factored into their evaluation scheme is what truly bothers me. There’s something wrong when engineering alone is weighted as much as crime on campus.
3) There’s a big issue with their cost metric: where’s financial aid? If the rankings are trying to evaluate how much a University’s education costs for a student, financial aid has to be the biggest factor. Are you really going to evaluate a university’s cost without even considering financial aid?
So I certainly disagree with the Daily Beast’s rankings. At the end of the day, we all know why we came to Stanford, and this article doesn’t change ANY of that. The well-being and mental health of our students is extremely important to all of us, and I do agree that stress is an issue here on campus. We all have meetings, club activities, sports, volunteer work, parties, eating, more parties, and, of course, schoolwork. Without question, we are very busy students, and I think the quarter system certainly doesn’t help matters (it’s one of the biggest sources of stress for me).
But we have a lot of other good things going for us, and we have to realize that when we look at these rankings. The awesome weather, the great location, the opportunities that are literally all around us, and the fact that we ARE aware of this issue are definitely positives that we shouldn’t take for granted. As a student body, we Stanford students have much more to be happy about than to be stressed about, no matter what The Daily Beast says.”
About Raymond
Raymond is a sophomore at Stanford University majoring in Science, Technology and Society with a focus on Media Studies and Management Science and Engineering. When he’s not studying creativity and entrepreneurship in cutting edge organizations like Google and the impact of technology on media production and consumption, he enjoys politics, testing out new restaurants with friends, social advocacy, and traveling (he’s lived in six cities and speaks three languages). Other passions include writing, reading, magazines, concerts/live music, Pinkberry, and following new trends and technologies. He’s also working on a YA novel that he started writing as a senior at Phillips Exeter Academy. Ypulse Readers can also follow Raymond at @raymondbraun.
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Categorized under: Collegians, Youth Advisory Board