Princeton Review: Scranton a 'Best College' With Top Marks for Service and School Pride
The Princeton Review’s newly released annual college guide, “The Best 392 Colleges,” features The University of Scranton as one of the nation’s best overall universities, as well as a top-25 destination in categories related to service, sports and outdoor activities. The University has appeared on numerous best colleges lists in the last year, including those by The Princeton Review, U.S. News and World Report, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes.Once again selected as one of the nation’s best colleges by The Princeton Review, The University of Scranton also earned three top-25 rankings that reflect a campus culture rooted in connection, service and school pride.
The Princeton Review’s annual college guide, “The Best 392 Colleges,” was published Tuesday, Aug. 18. The highly anticipated ratings and rankings are based on the results of thousands of surveys, completed by college administrators and current students, plus institutional data.
In addition to ranking among the 392 best colleges — The Princeton Review does not rank the schools overall in a numerical list — Scranton ranks top-25 nationally in the following categories:
- No. 20 Great Outdoors: Students Get Outside
- No. 24 Most Engaged in Community Service
- No. 25 Students Love Their School Teams
The Princeton Review rates colleges in several categories on a scale of 60 to 99. Among Scranton’s highest scores were 90 for Professors Accessibility and 86 for Professors Interesting. The publication quoted students saying professors are “at Scranton because they want to teach and forge relationships with students” and they “are very determined to see you succeed.”
Scranton also received high scores of 85 for Financial Aid and 85 for Quality of Life, with students saying the campus atmosphere “is typically rather lively” with a “pretty walkable” campus that has many “comfortable and beautiful places to study and do work.”
“The colleges we profile in ‘The Best 392 Colleges’ vary by type, size, locale and campus culture,” Rob Franek, the book’s lead author, said in a press release. “The colleges that make our ranking lists in the book do so entirely as a result of their own students’ opinions of them. We don’t rank the schools on a single hierarchical list, nor have we ever crowned one college ‘best’ overall. No school is best overall. For 35 years, our goal for this project has been to create multiple ranking lists and resources to help college applicants answer what is likely the toughest but also the most important question in their journey to college: ‘Which college is best for me?’”
Earlier this summer, The University of Scranton’s Kania School of Management appeared on The Princeton’ Review’s list of Best Business Schools for 2027. Scranton’s KSOM was one of 208 colleges selected as a Best On-Campus MBA Program. Selections and rankings were based on more than 60 data points derived from surveys of students and business school administrators.
Founded in 1888, The University of Scranton is a Catholic and Jesuit university with 70 majors and more than 40 graduate programs housed in its three colleges (the Kania School of Management, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Leahy College of Health Sciences). Scranton has recently been recognized in national rankings by U.S. News and World Report, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes. The most recent First Destination Survey by the Roche Family Center for Career Development revealed success rates of 99% and 100% for Scranton's undergraduate and graduate members of the Class of 2024.