The Princeton Review Has Released "The Best 387 Colleges: 2022 Edition"

  • 30th Edition of the Guide Features 26 "Great Lists" Naming Colleges That Have Been Standouts in the Book's Annual "Best of" Ranking Lists for Decades

NEW YORK, August 31, 2021 / — The Princeton Review®—one of the nation’s best-known education services companies—today released the 30th edition of one of its most popular books: The Best 387 Colleges (Penguin Random House, 2022 Edition, August 31, 2021, $24.99).

The new edition of the company’s annual ”Best Colleges” guide has two-page profiles of the schools with input from students attending them, school rating scores in eight categories including Financial Aid, and other resources found in no other college guides.

The Best 387 Colleges also has a twist that sets it apart from the 29 previous editions of the book.

For this milestone edition, The Princeton Review curated a unique resource: 26 “Great Lists.” The “Great Lists” identify the colleges in the book with the most impressive history of appearances on company’s annual “Best of” ranking lists over the years. The colleges named on the “Great Lists” are those with truly stellar records of student satisfaction as The Princeton Review tallies its annual “Best Colleges” ranking lists based on data from the company’s surveys of students at the colleges who rate and report on their campus experiences at them.

The 26 "Great List" categories chosen for this special 30th edition resource focus on topics that have become increasingly important to college applicants and parents in searches for their “best fit” colleges. Among them are lists that name outstanding colleges for Great Financial Aid, Great Professors, Great Career Services, Great Health Services, and Great Classroom Experience. The Best 387 Colleges' “Great Lists” posted on The Princeton Review website today and are viewable here (https://stg-www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings/best-colleges).

“We are delighted to shine this deserving light on the exceptional colleges that made our ‘Great Lists,’” said Rob Franek, editor-in-chief of The Princeton Review and author of The Best 387 Colleges. “Their placement on these lists goes beyond our high opinion of the colleges: their inclusion in our ‘Best Colleges’ guide bears witness to that. Their ‘Great List’ designations are totally due to the high ratings the college's very own students have given them over years of student surveys we have conducted for the book and its annual ‘top 20 colleges’ ranking lists in 62 categories.”

The Princeton Review curated the "Great Lists" by doing a deep data dive through the book's ranking lists in past editions all the way back to the first edition in 1992. The selections were based on three criteria: the number of times a college appeared on a list (including how recent the last appearance was), its numerical rank when on a list, and the overall consistency of feedback from the schools’ surveyed students in a given category. Each “Great List” names from 16 to 29 schools in alphabetical (not ranked) order.

Interesting facts about the book's “Great Lists” and the colleges that made the lists:

  • 214 (56%) of the 387 colleges in the book made one or more of the 26 categories of “Great Lists.” 154 (72%) of the schools are private and 60 (28%) are public colleges.

  • Four schools made 11 “Great Lists”: Claremont McKenna College (Claremont, CA), Franklin W. Olin, College of Engineering (Needham, MA), Rice University (Houston, TX) and Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN).

  • Three schools made 10 lists: Kansas State (Manhattan, KS), U.S. Military Academy (West Point, NY), and Wabash College (Crawfordsville, IN). 

  • Two schools made 9 lists: University of Wisconsin—Madison, and Williams College (Williamstown, MA).

  • Two schools made 8 lists: Reed College (Portland, OR) and Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA).

  • Among the 11 schools that made 8 or more lists, categories on which the schools commonly appeared are (in order): Great Financial Aid, Students Love These Colleges, Great Quality of Life, and Great Professors.

Other resources in The Best 387 Colleges include The Princeton Review’s:

  • List, "Great Schools for 21 of the Most Popular Undergraduate Majors"
  • List, "Top 50 Colleges for Game Design"
  • List, "Top 50 Colleges for Entrepreneurship Studies"
  • List, "200 Best Value Colleges for 2021"
  • Honor Rolls identifying colleges that earned the company’s highest rating score (99) for: Financial Aid, Fire Safety, and Green (based on commitment to sustainability and the environment).

Missing from The Best 387 Colleges are the company’s 62 “top 20” ranking lists of colleges.  “With most students attending college remotely this past year due to COVID, we knew it would be impossible to survey them about their on-campus experiences—from how they rated their college library to their campus food,” said Franek. “After all, the majority of them were dining in their family dining rooms, not their campus dining halls. We look forward to returning to our traditional and robust student survey process in the 2021-22 academic year ahead.”

Today, The Princeton Review also released findings of its recent July–August survey sent to 655 college administrators on topics from their fall reopenings and COVID protocols to enrollment forecasts and more. Among the findings, based on responses from nearly 300 administrators, 96% reported that the majority of their fall classes will be in-person, and 64% said they are mandating COVID vaccinations for their students. A release on the survey findings with a link to a complete report on the findings is posted in The Princeton Review Media Center (https://stg-www.princetonreview.com/media).

The Best 387 Colleges is one of more than 150 books in a line developed by The Princeton Review and published by Penguin Random House. Other titles for college and college-bound students include: College Admissions During COVID, The College Wellness Guide, The Complete College Planner, The K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Differences, and Paying for College. The Princeton Review also publishes annual guides to standardized tests used in college admission, placement, scholarship and financial aid award decisions.

About The Princeton Review

The Princeton Review®, is a leading tutoring, test prep, and college admission services company. Every year, it helps millions of college- and graduate school–bound students achieve their education and career goals through online and in-person courses delivered by a network of more than 4,000 teachers and tutors, online resources, and its more than 150 print and digital books published by Penguin Random House. The company’s Tutor.com brand is one of the largest online tutoring services in the U.S. It comprises a community of thousands of tutors who have delivered nearly 21 million one-to-one tutoring sessions. The Princeton Review is headquartered in New York, NY. The Princeton Review is not affiliated with Princeton University. For more information, visit PrincetonReview.com and the company's Media Center. Follow the company on Twitter (@ThePrincetonRev) and Instagram (@theprincetonreview).

THE BEST 387 COLLEGES: 2022 Edition

by Rob Franek with David Soto, Stephen Koch, Aaron Riccio, and Anna Goodlett

Penguin Random House

Trade paperback $24.99 (Canada $33.99) • August 31, 2021 • 880 pages • ISBN 9780525570820


SOURCE: The Princeton Review

WEBSITE: www.princetonreview.com

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CONTACT: Jeanne Krier, Publicist for The Princeton Review /Tutor.com, PressOffice@review.com, or Suzanne Podhurst, PhD, VP of Institutional Marketing and Corporate Communications, The Princeton Review /Tutor.com, PressOffice@review.com.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Available for interviews are Rob Franek, Editor-in-Chief, The Princeton Review, and lead author of The Best 387 Colleges, and David Soto, Director of Content Development, The Princeton Review and longtime co-author of the “Best Colleges” guide. Rob or David can discuss the 30th edition “Great Lists” and the fascinating history of the book as well as comment on colleges that made high interest lists. Reporter resources are accessible at https://stg-www.princetonreview.com/press/best-colleges-presskit  They include FAQs on the company’s ranking methodologies and lists, “By the Numbers” and “Over the Years” fact sheets about this project, and breakout lists showing colleges in the book and/or on the “Great Lists” by state/city/college/list.

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