Which US universities are the most loved or hated on Twitter?

Nowadays, everyone uses social media to express what they’re feeling, especially students. So what do they have to say about the universities or colleges they attend?

Out of curiosity, CollegeStats.org analyzed over 100,000 tweets posted in the months of March and April this year to see how many used the Twitter handles of U.S. colleges and universities, poring over what students are tweeting and gauging their sentiments towards their alma mater based on the prevalence of positive and negative words.

The study scored sentiment in a range from -1 to 1, and considered a score between 0 and 1 as positive sentiment.


Image via CollegeStats.org

The top five universities deemed the most “praiseworthy” by the analysis, with the highest average Twitter sentiment, are:

  1. Villanova University (Vilanova, Pennsylvania) – 0.20
  2. Syracuse University (Syracuse, New York) – 0.14
  3. Temple University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) – 0.14
  4. Old Dominion University (Norfolk, Virginia) – 0.14
  5. James Madison University (Harrisonburg, Virginia) – 0.13


Image via CollegeStats.org

As for the institutions with the most positive words used per tweet on average:

  1. Drury University (Springfield, Missouri) – 1.89 positive words/tweet
  2. Juniata College (Huntingdon, Pennsylvania) – 1.43 positive words/tweet
  3. Bradley University (Peoria, Illinois) – 1.29 positive words/tweet
  4. Earlham College (Richmond, Indiana) – 1.29 positive words/tweet
  5. Gonzaga University (Spokane, Washington) – 1.29 positive words/tweet

In tweets which had positive words regarding an institution, the terms “great,” “good,” “like,” “love,” “happy,” and “recommend” are some of the most frequently used. Besides that, words such as “awesome,” “wow,” “well,” “beautiful,” “support,” and “excited” were also counted as expressions of positive sentiment.


Image via CollegeStats.org

The analysis also included the opposite end of the spectrum,listing institutions which earned the most negatively-worded tweets, many of which included offensive terms or curse words. 

However, possibly due to the relatively small sample size of tweets collected for the study, colleges and universities from Western states did not make much of a mark.

Image via StockPhotoSecrets.

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