How did you choose the schools featured in The Best 368 Colleges: 2009 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 120,000 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 368 Colleges has 62 ranking lists, each one identifying the top 20 colleges (of the 368 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 368 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 368 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 368 Colleges are based on our surveys of more than 120,000 students. That's an average of 325 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 colleges as Hofstra University, University of Mississippi, and the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Schools that are particularly supportive of our survey encourage their students to participat. 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?
The survey is conducted two ways—via our website at which students can submit a secure student survey online, and also on paper. About 95 percent of the surveys upon which the rankings in the book are based came to us online. The paper surveys are 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. In some cases, the colleges prefer we survey their students entirely online rather than having students complete paper surveys. In these cases, the colleges will send an email to their student body encouraging them to participate. 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 2007-2008 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 2007-2008 school year, some are from the 2006-2007 school year and some arefrom the 2005-2006 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 368 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 368 Colleges. We have 62 ranking lists—each one reporting the top 20 schools (of the 368 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 368 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. (See below for more info about it.) Our ratings are based on institutional data that we get from schools and/or data from our student surveys. All schools in our Best 368 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* for that category. See The Princeton Review's College Ratings for more info.
What's new in this edition?
The Best 368 Colleges: 2009 Edition has profiles of four new schools, a new ranking list category and a new rating. The new schools we are pleased to add to the book are: the City University of New York-Baruch College, Nazareth College (Rochester, NY), Prescott College (Prescott, AZ), and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Our new ranking list category, “Best Athletic Facilities,” lists the 20 schools at which students gave the highest ratings to their athletic/recreational facilities. We salute the University of Maryland at College Park, which is number one on the list. Finally, we are proud to introduce to the book our new “Green Rating,” a measure of how environmentally friendly a college is. We asked all the schools we collect data from annually to answer a number of questions that evaluate their performance as an environmentally aware and responsible institution. We developed the questions and methodology for the rating in consultation with ecoAmerica, a nonprofit research and partnership-based environmental organization. The questions cover: 1) whether students have a campus quality of life that is both healthy and sustainable; 2) how well a school is preparing students not only for employment in the clean energy economy of the 21st century, but also for citizenship in a world now defined by environmental challenges; and 3) how environmentally responsible a school’s policies are. In Best 368 Colleges we publish an Honor Roll List saluting the 11 colleges in the book that received Green Ratings of 99 (a perfect score) in this edition. In alphabetical order, the colleges on that list are: Arizona State University, Bates College, the College of the Atlantic, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard College, the State University of New York at Binghamton, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Oregon, the University of Washington and Yale University. You will also find our Green Rating on some of the school profiles in our Best Northeastern Colleges, 2009 edition, and our Complete Book of Colleges, 2009 edition, as well as on several school profiles here on our site.
Where can I buy the book?
Here.