Methodology

Our survey was conducted over a period of 14 days, from June 23 to July 6, 2020. On three occasions, the ‘Prince’ emailed the questions, assembled in a Google form, to members of the Class of 2024 included in the Residential College Facebook as of May 24 — a total of 1,336 people. All told, we received 737 responses, comprising just over 55 percent of the class.

Every question on the survey was optional. On certain sensitive questions, respondents could explicitly decline to answer. Although all responses were fully anonymous, the Google form was limited to individuals with a University-issued email address, and a feature from Google enabled the ‘Prince’ to prevent multiple submissions. To protect respondents’ anonymity and data, only select senior members of our staff received access to the raw data, and none made any effort to identify individual respondents. As part of our commitment to comprehensive privacy, we collected all raw data on Google accounts unaffiliated with the University.

Upon receiving an abundance of submissions, we embarked on a months-long process of compiling and checking each tabulation. A minimum of two ‘Prince’ staffers from our Class of 2024 survey team verified every datapoint. Team members were chosen based on comfort with data analysis, interest in information aggregation, and seniority.

We exercised discretion when presenting the data in question. Our team carefully considered the implications of various cross-tabulations and sought to ensure that the responses of individual students may not be identified. When utilizing percentages, rather than raw numbers, to represent data, our team rounded the value to the nearest 10th of a percent. As every query was optional, many questions garnered sample sizes one to two percent smaller than the overall respondent pool; in our narratives, “respondent” refers to any student who responded to a given question.

Despite our best efforts, our survey includes limitations. We did not complete statistical analysis of data points cross-tabulated from two or more questions, nor did we make any attempt to sample the data — a practice that entails increasing or decreasing the weight of various demographic groups to more accurately match the overall picture of a larger group. All the same, a check of our respondent pool’s composition against data previously released by the University indicates a fairly representative and large sample.

Other conditions are more idiosyncratic: Our survey closed before the University announced that first-years and juniors would spend the fall on a campus, a decision that was later reversed. While the survey remained open, Nassau Hall renamed First College and the School of Public and International Affairs, prompting us to tweak the concentration options we listed. Furthermore, some members of the Class of 2024 may not have checked their University email during the period in which we accepted responses.

Since late July, hundreds of members of the Class of 2023 have embarked on gap years, joining the ranks of 2024, and hundreds more have moved in identical fashion from 2024 to 2025. Our survey constitutes a glance at the Class of 2024 as it existed in late June and early July. To that end, we recognize that we surveyed a Class of 2024 that differs notably from the Class of 2024 that exists today.

As you browse the pages that follow, we ask that you do so with a careful and discerning eye. The information contained within, synthesized from over 70,000 individual pieces of data, reveals a portrait of our community — a tale that speaks to what our University is and may become, as well as the people who define it.