Can You Really Rely on The Princeton Review College Rankings?
The Princeton Review is a credible college ranking site.
Meanwhile, Princeton University is one of the most highly-ranked institutions.
It’s worth pointing out that the two are not related.
Princeton University is in New Jersey and came into being in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, while The Princeton Review is headquartered in New York City and started in 1981.
While Princeton (the school) is prestigious, The Princeton Review is trusted by many.
Its rankings are accurate in that they are according to student experience — it asks more than 165,000 college students to rank things like academics, the administration, campus life, dorm living, food, etc.
The opinions of a panel of college counselors and advisors are considerations, too.
Although widely accepted as an accurate college ranking site, The Princeton Review is not without its critics and controversies, mostly on how it oversimplifies and generalizes each college’s unique qualities and offerings.
One Big List and 50 Small Lists
The Princeton Review comes up with The Best 389 Colleges every year.
As the name suggests, it’s a list of some of the finest 380+ higher education institutions in the United States — it comes in book form and provides free access to SAT and ACT practice tests.
Within the Best 389 Colleges are 50 ranking lists.
Each list presents the top 25 schools in a particular category.
Please note that the 25 schools included in each list are from the 389 institutions found in The Best 389 Colleges, not from all degree-granting postsecondary schools in the country, amounting to nearly 4,000.
Ranking Methodology
Schools in the Best 389 Colleges make up merely around 10% of all US colleges and universities.
Still, the Princeton Review does not examine every school in the land — each year, it continuously monitors and collects data from more than 2,000 institutions only.
In a nutshell, it chooses colleges according to its high opinion of their academics.
Here are some of the things The Princeton Review does in finalizing the list:
- Visit colleges personally
- Meet with their respective administrators
- Talk to teachers
- Survey students and parents
The Princeton Review rankings also heeds the insights of its National College Counselor Advisory Board.
It has 27 members, consisting of college counselors and academic advisors.
Meanwhile, the 50 ranking lists are based solely on student opinions.
To come up with each list, which presents only the top 25 colleges (from the 380+ in the book) for the category, the Princeton Review sends online questionnaires to over 165,000 students.
An average of 426 students per school participate, although the number can vary depending on the enrollment.
There are 85 questions surveyed students have to answer.
The questions students have to answer are from the following categories:
- About themselves
- About their school’s academics and administration
- About campus life
- About their peers’ attitudes and opinion
Some questions are the multiple-choice kind.
Students have to choose from options such as poor, excellent, strongly disagree, and strongly agree; some come in ranges such as 0% to 20% or 81% to 100%.
Unusual Approaches to Ranking Colleges
If you believe that The Best 389 Colleges ranks institutions from #1 to #389, better think again!
Unlike other popular college ranking sites like US News, The Princeton Review does not list included academic institutions from the best and the not-so-best of the bunch.
Instead, it presents them in alphabetical order.
When you look at the list, the first schools you will come across are the following:
- Agnes Scott College
- Albion College
- Alfred University
- Allegheny College
- American University
- Amherst College
- Angelo State University
- Appalachian State University
- Arizona State University
- Assumption University
No, it doesn’t mean that each school is better than the one immediately below it — it’s just that the one above the other is the first to appear in the dictionary.
However, on The Princeton Review’s website, you can arrange the list in several ways.
Arranging them by popularity (number of views) gives you a list spearheaded by these schools:
- Harvard College
- Cornell University
- Brown University
- New York University
- Stanford University
- Princeton University
- Boston College
- Yale University
- Duke University
- Syracuse University
There are also 50 college rankings.
Unlike The Best 389 Colleges, the said college rankings rank colleges from #1 to #25 — each ranking mentions only the top 25 schools in a particular category, all of which are from the 389 list of colleges.
The said rankings fall under seven main categories:
- Academics and Administration
- Demographics
- Extracurriculars
- Politics
- Quality of Life
- Social Scene
- Town Life
Some lists are conventional, and other college rankers may have similar lists, too.
Let us take a look at the Great Financial Aid list, for example:
| Ranking | Institution Name |
|---|---|
| #1 | Washington University in St. Louis |
| #2 | Thomas Aquinas College (CA) |
| #3 | Skidmore College |
| #4 | College of the Atlantic |
| #5 | Wabash College |
| #6 | Emory University |
| #7 | St. Olaf College |
| #8 | Reed College |
| #9 | Williams College |
| #10 | Gettysburg College |
| #11 | California Institute of Technology |
| #12 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| #13 | Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering |
| #14 | Dickinson College |
| #15 | Princeton University |
| #16 | Union College (NY) |
| #17 | Trinity College (CT) |
| #18 | Amherst College |
| #19 | Vanderbilt University |
| #20 | Wellesley College |
| #21 | Grinnell College |
| #22 | Bowdoin College |
| #23 | Rice University |
| #24 | Columbia University |
| #25 | Juniata College |
Other rankings you might find interesting and helpful in the college selection process include:
- Best Athletic Facilities
- Best Career Services
- Best Classroom Experience
- Best College Dorms
- Best College Newspaper
- Best Science Lab Facilities
- Best Student Support and Counseling Services
- Friendliest Students
- Happiest Students
- Most Accessible Professors
- Most Beautiful Campus
- Most Conservative Students
- Most Liberal Students
- LGBTQ-Friendly
- Most Religious Students
But then there are also rankings that you might find unusual and even hilarious.
Just take a look at the following list of Lots of Hard Liquor:
| Ranking | Institution Name |
|---|---|
| #1 | Tulane University |
| #2 | Colgate University |
| #3 | Syracuse University |
| #4 | West Virginia University |
| #5 | Wake Forest University |
| #6 | Grinnell College |
| #7 | University of Wisconsin – Madison |
| #8 | Providence College |
| #9 | Bucknell University |
| #10 | Trinity College (CT) |
| #11 | University of Mississippi |
| #12 | Boston College |
| #13 | Penn State University Park |
| #14 | Eckerd College |
| #15 | Bryant University |
| #16 | Gettysburg College |
| #17 | Denison University |
| #18 | Claremont McKenna College |
| #19 | University of Connecticut |
| #20 | The University of the South |
| #21 | University of Dayton |
| #22 | University of Richmond |
| #23 | Centre College |
| #24 | University of Delaware |
| #25 | University of Maine |
Other lists that you might find peculiar (but refreshing and informative to an extent, too) like I did are:
- Campus Food Not So Tasty
- Cancel the Keg
- College Dorms Not So Fancy
- Least Religious Students
- Lots of Beer
- Pot’s Not Hot
- Professors Get Low Marks
- Scotch and Soda, Hold the Scotch
Things That Make You Go Hmm
US News is a popular college ranking site like The Princeton Review.
While it ranks around 1,500 colleges and universities in the country, The Princeton Review ranks less than 400 only.
However, it surveys 2,000+ schools and creates a legit list based on the findings.
Some critics argue that the sample size of The Princeton Review per school isn’t large enough to accurately represent the students’ sentiments, especially where a large student body is concerned.
Others maintain that the methodology used is too simple and sweeping that it deemphasizes the unique attributes of ranked colleges, thus keeping students from finding the best colleges for them.
You will find featured schools when browsing the lists on The Princeton Review website.
It refers to them as its marketing partner institutions.
According to it, institutions with the word “featured” paid for the designation. It clarifies that they did not do so for inclusion in the Best 389 Colleges and any of the 50 college rankings.
Still, with money involved, one can’t help but doubt the rankings’ reliability.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the College Reality Check.
