When prospective members of the class of 2013 look at the Princeton Review’s 2008 college rankings, Stanford’s top 10 finish in the categories of “Happiest Students,” “Diverse Student Population” and “Toughest to Get Into” might sway their application decisions. But what applicants may not know is just how those rankings are generated.

Director of Admission Shawn Abbott denounced the rankings, which are calculated from surveys completed by a self-selected group of a few hundred Stanford students.

Students can fill out surveys online or in person. According to Robert Franek, author of Princeton Review’s “Best 366 Colleges,” 95 percent of survey responses come in online.

Methods for soliciting in-person responses vary across schools. Abbott said that students and staff members volunteered for several days earlier this winter, hosting tables in Tresidder Union, where students passing by could fill out the paper surveys.

Approximately 130 paper surveys were received. In combination with the expected online survey yield, Franek said he was confident that Stanford’s survey returns would be “well within [Princeton Review’s] average” of 350 responses per school.

In addition to working with school administrators to set up a survey distribution table on campus, Franek said that he works closely with campus contacts to send the survey link to as many undergraduates as possible.

At Stanford, however, no additional outreach was made to secure responses.

“Honestly, we don’t really endorse the services or products of the Princeton Review,” Abbott said in an email to The Daily, citing the company’s for-profit incentives.

“We only reluctantly participated in their survey because, regardless of our participation, they informed us that Stanford would be included in their next guidebook,” Abbott continued. “Rather than have Stanford misrepresented with either outdated information or factually incorrect information, we wanted to at least provide them with accurate perspectives from Stanford students.”

Although the pool of students may be self-selected, Franek said, it is “without question representative” of the student body as a whole.

There have, however, been problems with bias in the past. Several years ago, according to Franek, Macalester College asked a student religious group to complete its surveys following a high ranking in the category “Students Ignore God on a Regular Basis.”

“We made very clear that this was not what we were interested in,” Franek said. “We disregarded all the surveys from that sample and then resurveyed all students.”

At the University of Pennsylvania, administrators sent the survey link earlier this school year to members of Kite and Key, a group of students who volunteer as tour guides and participate in other outreach efforts.

Even this slight targeting, Franek said, goes directly against the survey’s mission.

“There’s not an agreement that colleges would sign, but we are very clear, perfectly clear in my mind, as to what kind of responses we’re looking for,” he said. “Allowing a school to simply hand out surveys to a cross-section of students whom they choose doesn’t seem fair to me.”

Franek said the survey results were “absolutely accurate.”

“They are accurate because they are not the opinion of me or the Princeton Review,” he said. “They’re the opinion of the 120,000 students that shared their opinions with us last year.”

Abbott acknowledged the weight that these rankings carry for prospective students, but questioned their survey methods.

“Their methodology is even weaker than U.S. News & World Report, which looks sophisticated by comparison,” Abbott said. “Ranking colleges using categories like ‘Reefer Madness’ and ‘Dodgeball Targets’ just dumbs down the whole process for everyone involved.”