FAQs: The Best 371 Colleges
How did you choose the schools featured in The Best 371 Colleges: 2010 Edition?
We selected these colleges and universities based on our high opinion of their academics as well as the feedback we get from counselors, students, parents, educators and our own staff at Princeton Review locations across the country.
We monitor colleges continuously and annually collect data on more than 2,000 schools. Each year we also visit scores of schools, and meet with or talk to hundreds of college administrators. We don’t use a mathematical formula in making our selection of schools for the book (though the college rankings in it are based on mathematical tallies of data from our student surveys). There are two key additional criteria that have influenced our selection of schools for this book since the very first edition in 1992.
One: We work to have a wide representation of outstanding colleges in the book. These include public and private institutions from all parts of the country (plus two universities in Canada). There are small- and large-sized, traditional and nontraditional, highly selective and open-admission schools, plus some that are very expensive and others that are great bargains. You'll also find schools with religious affiliations, historically black colleges and universities, men's colleges, women's colleges, and some schools acclaimed for their unique focus on science, engineering, technology or other specialized fields.
Two: Any college we consider adding to the guide must agree to allow us to conduct candid surveys of its students. What students say about their schools and their campus life is very important to us and to prospective applicants and their parents—especially those who are unable to visit the campuses in person. We share the opinions we gather from surveyed students in our narrative profiles about the schools, and our student surveys (more than 122,000 of them!) are the core basis for our college rankings.
How many ranking lists are in the book, and how did you compile the lists?
The Best 371 Colleges has 62 ranking lists, each one identifying the top 20 colleges (of the 371 schools in the book—not of all colleges in the nation) in a specific category. The categories cover a wide range of topics that applicants to the schools might want to know or ask about on a campus visit, including academics, administrative services, financial aid, campus amenities (like dorms and food), the student body's political leanings, race/class interaction, gay community acceptance, social life and much more. All 62 ranking lists are based solely on what students told us about their own colleges on our 80-question student survey. See The Princeton Review's College Rankings for information on what each of the 62 ranking lists is based on.
Why don't you have one list that ranks all the schools in the book?
We don't believe that any one school is the best overall. While academics are important—and some of our college rankings are solely about academics—we believe all 371 schools in the book are academically outstanding. Moreover, we don't think academics should be the exclusive reason for choosing a school—and in most cases, it isn't. Among other crucial factors (such as location, cost and size), the campus culture is very important, and varies considerably from school to school. Some colleges in our book may be ideal for some students but wrong for others, depending on their interests and needs. The schools featured in The Best 371 Colleges—our picks of the cream of the crop colleges and universities—comprise only the top 15 percent of all four-year colleges in the nation. These are all very different schools with many different and wonderful things to offer. We offer a wide range of ranking lists to help students and parents choose the best schools for them.
How many students were surveyed for your ranking lists?
The ranking lists in The Best 371 Colleges are based on our surveys of more than 122,000 students. That's an average of 329 students per school, though that number varies depending on the size of the student population. We've surveyed anywhere from 26 men at Deep Springs College (100 percent of the student body) to over 1,000 collegians at such schools as Hofstra University, University of Mississippi, and the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Schools that are particularly supportive of our survey encourage their students to participate. Some e-mail their entire student body with information on how to submit a secure survey online at http://survey.review.com. That level of cooperation always helps generate a wide response.
How is the survey conducted?
Almost all (99 percent) of the surveys upon which the rankings in this edition of the book are based were completed online at our website at http://survey.review.com. The rest were paper surveys that were distributed and collected on the campuses at one or more centrally trafficked locations either by a representative of The Princeton Review or someone from the college. Initially all of our surveys were completed on paper but now, nearly all the colleges prefer we survey their students entirely online. For more on this, see Surveying Colleges: How We Do It.
When was the survey conducted?
We receive surveys online from students at the schools in this book (as well as from other institutions) all year, so a sizable number of the surveys came to us in the 2008-2009 academic year. In addition, we formally re-survey each school in the book at a minimum of every three years, so some surveys upon which this edition’s rankings are based are from the 2008-2009 school year, some are from the 2007-2008 school year and some are from the 2006-2007 school year. We re-survey schools more often than that if the school requests it and we can accommodate their request, or if we believe it is necessary for one reason or another. Online surveys submitted by students outside of a school’s normal survey cycle and independent of any solicitation on our part are factored into the subsequent year’s rankings and ratings calculations. In that respect, our surveying is a continuous process.
What was the survey format?
The survey has more than 80 questions across four categories. We ask students to tell us about themselves, their school’s academics/administration, campus life, and their fellow students’ attitudes and opinions. For the multiple-choice questions, survey respondents indicate their answers on a five-point grid. The headers for the grids vary, depending on the type of question asked. They may range from “Excellent” to “Awful” or from “Extremely” to “Not at All.” In some cases the range is in percentages, from “0-20%” to “81-100%.” Each college is given a score based on its students’ answers to each survey question. This enables us to compare student opinions from college to college—apples to apples, as it were—and on that basis we tally the rankings. We also have several open-ended “comments” areas on the survey inviting students to tell us in their own words what they think of their schools, and we choose the most representative comments for inclusion in the narrative profiles.
My college is not on any of the ranking lists. Why?
That could be because the college isn't one of the 371 in the book. Our ranking lists are based only on our surveys of students at the schools in the book. Or it could be that the school is in the book, but there wasn't a high enough consensus of opinion among the students we surveyed in response to any of the survey questions for the school to make a list.
How can I complete a survey about my school?
It's easy, and it only takes ten to fifteen minutes. Just click here. You may submit a survey about your school once every academic year if you like, and we encourage you to do so (but our site will only accept one survey from you per year, so no stuffing the ballot box).
The profiles of colleges in this book and on your site have "ratings." What's the difference between the ratings and the rankings?
We’re glad you asked, because sometimes people confuse the two. The rankings are ordered lists. They reflect how schools compare to other schools in The Best 371 Colleges. We have 62 ranking lists—each one reporting the top 20 schools (of the 371 in the book) in a specific category. All of our ranking lists are based on our surveys of students at the schools, and only schools in The Best 371 Colleges can appear on our 62 ranking lists. See The Princeton Review's College Rankings for more info on them.
Our ratings are numerical scores on a scale of 60 to 99 that show how each school measures up on a fixed scale. We tally ratings in eight categories: Academics, Admissions Selectivity, Financial Aid, Quality of Life, Professors Interesting, Professors Accessible, Fire Safety and our new Green Rating. Our ratings are based on institutional data that we get from schools and/or data from our student surveys. All schools in our Best 371 Colleges, our Best Northeastern Colleges, and the schools we designate on our site as “regional bests”— Best in the Northeast, Best in the South, Best in the Midwest, or Best in the West—receive our eight ratings. Schools from which we have not received sufficient data to compile a rating for a particular category receive a rating of 60* (sixty with an asterisk) for that category. See The Princeton Review's College Ratings for more info.
What's new in this edition?
The Best 371 Colleges: 2010 Edition has profiles of six new schools, two new ranking list categories, and a new Honor Roll. We have also included in the book our list of 100 Best Value Colleges (50 public and 50 private schools) that we named in January 2009. We partnered with USA Today on that project (the list of schools has been available on our site and on USA Today’s site as well). The new schools we are pleased to add to the book are: Angelo State University (San Angelo, TX), Green Mountain College (Poultney, VT), Marywood University (Scranton, PA), Stonehill College (Easton, MA), University of Charleston (Charleston, WV), and University of Rochester (Rochester, NY). Our two new ranking list categories are “Easiest Campus to Get Around,” and “Most Popular Study-Abroad Program.” Our new Financial Aid Honor Roll salutes 13 schools that received our highest Financial Aid Rating score of 99: American Jewish University, Beloit College, California Institute of Technology, Claremont McKenna College, Gettysburg College, Harvard College, Lake Forest College, Swarthmore College, Thomas Aquinas College, Wabash College, Washington University in St. Louis, and Williams College. In Best 371 Colleges we also publish a Green Rating Honor Roll saluting the 15 colleges that received Green Ratings of 99 (the highest possible score), and a Fire Safety Honor Roll saluting 15 colleges that received Fire Safety Ratings of 99 (the highest possible score).
Where can I buy the book?
Here.