An incoming first year’s thoughts about Bucknell directly have to do with where they got their information from. I do not have Instagram and did all of my research on the basic links that come up when you google colleges (US News Rankings, Niche, Prepscholar acceptance calculator, etc.). It is because of this that I viewed Bucknell through a lot of statistics before coming here and was pleasantly surprised by the strong community not represented in the numbers. But, I know many people who saw Bucknell’s Instagram posts and were a little shocked to discover some of these statistics firsthand. 

It is no secret to Bucknell students that the communications department will go out of its way to showcase diversity on campus. This makes sense as Bucknell is trying to attract a more diverse student population, so it would be beneficial for interested students to believe they will be coming to a campus that fosters diverse communities. But it does not take much scrolling on our US News Ranking page to find that we only have 20 percent minority enrollment. Our Niche profile hides it more by giving us a B+ in diversity and making a prospective student click into more information about students to see the 76 percent white statistic. However, this is after they have seen the poll results that list that 1/5 of respondents would use the words “wealthy” and “stuck up” to describe our students, so maybe that could’ve been a clue. 

Of course, it’s not all bad. Bucknell consistently is shown to be a friendly and collaborative space between Bucknell communications, @iamraybucknell and other responses on Niche and US News Rankings. We are also widely perceived as a school with strong academics. Prepscholar ranks us as moderately competitive and our numbers for test scores and GPAs back this up. Countless reviews of Bucknell also show how people think the buildings and overall setup of campus feel academic and inviting. 

Even if a student were to take in all the available information before coming to campus, nothing can prepare them fully for what it is like to be in college. A quote we often hear is that “Bucknell is what you make of it,” but it is true. Depending on your major and involvement on campus, different statistics or posts may resonate with you more. That is why Bucknell tries to have a variety of perspectives on the @iamraybucknell account. Like with all social media, we are not always broadcasting the setbacks of Bucknell and our campus, but neither is any other college. We are not unique in our tactics to bring more students to campus. So while Bucknell social media may have two sides, we have to acknowledge that it would be next to impossible for it to have as many sides as there are to an authentic Bucknell experience. When it comes to the college search process, for better or for worse, a student’s expectations will almost never match the reality.