Princeton Review Counts The University of Scranton among Nation’s Best 373 Colleges
For the ninth consecutive year, The Princeton Review counted The University of Scranton among the best colleges in North America. Scranton is among the elite schools profiled in the 2011 edition of “The Best 373 Colleges” guidebook, which became available in bookstores on Aug. 3, 2010.
The Princeton Review touts Scranton’s “outstanding record for admission to graduate programs, not only in law and medicine, but also in several other fields.”
“We commend The University of Scranton for its outstanding academics, which is the primary criteria for our selection of schools for the book,” said Robert Franek, author of “The Best 371 Colleges” and senior vice president/publishing for The Princeton Review in a news release announcing the 2011 edition. “Our choices are based on institutional data we collect about schools, our visits to schools over the years, feedback we gather from students attending the schools, and the opinions of our staff and our 28-member National College Counselor Advisory Board.”
According to Franek, outstanding academics is the primary criteria for selecting the schools to be included in the book, which lists only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and two Canadian colleges.
The guidebook includes detailed profiles of the selected 373 best colleges and ratings in eight categories, as well as rankings of the top 20 schools in 62 lists based on The Princeton Review’s survey of more than 122,000 students.
In the 2011 edition, Scranton students were quoted as saying “if you come here, expect to be challenged to become a better person, to develop a strong concern for the poor and marginalized, and to grow spiritually,” and that students are “friendly and welcoming.”
The schools in “The Best 373 Colleges” are also part of a group of 623 colleges that The Princeton Review commends (but does not rank) in its website feature, “2011 Best Colleges: Region by Region - Northeast / Midwest / Southeast / West.”
The University of Scranton has also been nationally recognized for excellence through rankings in U.S. News & World Report, which has rated Scranton among the top 10 Master’s Universities in the North for the past 16 years; among “Great Schools at a Great Price” for the past six years; among just 77 top “Up and Coming” schools in the nation for two years; and among just 80 schools in the nation recognized for “a Strong Commitment to Teaching” in a new peer assessment that began last year. The University of Scranton is also among just 119 colleges in the nation earning the highly selective Community Engagement Classification designated by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Scranton was recognized for its Curricular Engagement (the connection of teaching, learning and scholarship to community) and Outreach and Partnership (the extent of focus of institutional resources on community collaboration).