Interviews and documents show that employees of Trump University at times applied pressure on students to offer favorable reviews, instructed them to fill out the forms in order to obtain their graduation certificates, and ignored standard practices used to ensure that the surveys were filled out objectively.

“It’s absolutely a con,” said Mr. Guillo, who spent $36,000 on Trump University classes and later requested a refund. “The role of the evaluations were a defense against any legal actions. They anticipated those actions.”

At the same time, students and their lawyers have raised doubts about Mr. Trump’s claim of 98 percent satisfaction. A website set up to defend Trump University, 98percentapproval.com, has published 10,000 student evaluations, but not all of them were from paying students. They include some from the more than 3,000 free guests that paying participants were encouraged to bring to the classes. More than 2,000 other students never made it to the end of their courses — they sought and received refunds before the end of their classes, as company policy allowed, according to court records…

At the conclusion of every program, teachers instructed attendees to complete surveys, rating the experience on a scale of one to 5. But, in what academics and experts said were unusual practices, Trump University did not explicitly offer students anonymity on the forms, often asked them to complete the documents in the presence of instructors and, according to internal Trump University documents made public in litigation, asked students to submit the surveys in exchange for their graduation certificates.