At John Carroll University, the majority of students, especially those living on campus, rely heavily on Schott Dining Hall and the Inn-Between for all of their meals. The Inn-Between (better known as “The ‘Tween”) and Schott Dining Hall (commonly referred to as “The Caf”) both have several stations with different styles of food for patrons to take advantage of. The Caf is one of the most popular hangout spots on JCU’s campus because of their “all you can eat” buffets that help bring community members together.
Earlier this year, The Princeton Review published “Campus Food Not So Tasty” on their website. It is a list of 25 colleges classified based on the results of a survey asking students how they rated the food on their campuses at the time of questioning. On Feb. 6, the Instagram account BarstoolJCU posted a screenshot of John Carroll University ranked #21, which received a lot of attention from the JCU community and left many students in shock.
“I was not happy with the ranking,” BarstoolJCU told The Carroll News. “I feel that the food at The Caf and The ‘Tween are incredible compared to other schools such as Kent State. I thought it was outrageous [and felt] it needed to be on Instagram. I was expecting people to agree with the ranking because it seems to be a trend to hate the food here.”
BarstoolJCU went on by saying “I love The Caf food and I think it’s important to take into consideration other schools when saying the food isn’t good. I get it, it’s not as good as my mom’s food either, but nothing is going to be as good as your mom’s food.”
The Princeton Review is an educational company that provides students of all ages with tutoring, test preparation and information about the best colleges in the United States. Its website reports that, among the students that utilize it, 96% improved their grades and four of out five get into their top college. The Princeton Review is the top website for getting students into their college of preference.
Every year, the writers of the website publish a book about the top colleges in the country. Last year, “The Best 389 Colleges” was released, the same writing that has the statistic about the food served at John Carroll University.
According to an article on JCU’s website that was published in Sept. 2021, The Princeton Review selected John Carroll University as being one of the 158 best colleges in the midwest. JCU has its own section in “The Best 389 Colleges.” At the same time, John Carroll was named the second best college in the midwest.
In addition to providing information about which schools are ranked among the top, The Princeton Review also gives people a glimpse of the environment at some of these institutions by publishing results of various college ranking lists. The Princeton Review’s College Ranking Methodology says the following:
“Our 50 annual college ranking lists are entirely based on what students attending the schools in our Best Colleges book tells us about their colleges and their experiences at them via our student survey for this project. Each ranking list reports the top 25 colleges (of the 389 in the book) in a specific category.”
The Methodology continued with “We ask students about: 1) their school’s academics/administration, 2) life at their college, 3) their fellow students and 4) themselves. We give each college a score for its students’ answers to each survey question. Using these scores, we are able to tally our ranked lists. Most of our ranking lists are based on students’ answers to one survey question, such as ‘How do you rate your campus food?’ Some, such as our ‘Best Classroom Experience’ list, are based on students’ answers to more than one question.”
Danny Eidi ‘25 eats at The Caf about three times per week. Regarding BarstoolJCU’s Instagram post, he told The Carroll News “I was a bit surprised. I feel like most people complain about the food but I don’t see much of an issue with it.”
The Carroll News reached out to Parkhurst Dining but did not receive a response.
