The Best 371 Colleges, 2010 Edition

What makes The Best 371 Colleges the most popular college guide?

The Best 371 Colleges is a comprehensive college guide written for any student or parent mystified by the confusing college admissions process. This essential college-planning guide, from the experts at The Princeton Review, provides the facts about the best schools in the country, popular college ranking lists, and the information needed to make a smart decision about which schools to consider.

Revealing answers from college students cover each school’s unique character and give you extensive insight into their classes, financial aid, social life, and everything in between. Students are the experts, after all, and we talked to 122,000 of them!

• One-of-a-kind college rankings reveal the top colleges in 62 categories based on how students at the schools–the real experts!–rated their colleges. The ranking lists include:

- Top Professors
- Best Financial Aid
- Best Career/Job Placement Services
- Best Classroom Experiences
- Top Party Schools
- Dorms Like Palaces
- Best Athletic Facilities
- Best Campus Food
- Most Politically-Active Students
- Most Diverse Student Population
- Class Discussions Encouraged
- Best College Newspaper
- …and many more!

• Learn what you can do in high school to prepare yourself for admission to a selective college

• Get all the application essentials–tuition, admissions criteria, deadlines, phone numbers, addresses, demographics, student/faculty ratios, and most popular majors–for quick reference and easy comparison when you’re narrowing down your choices

• Green college ratings help readers find out if schools are environmentally-friendly

• Special section on great colleges for the 15 most popular majors

• An index of schools by cost allows you to search all colleges in the book by price

What the media is saying about The Best 371 Colleges from The Princeton Review:

"The offbeat indexes, along with the chattily-written descriptions of each school, provide a colorful picture of each campus." –New York Times

"The most efficient of the college guidebooks. Has entertaining profiles larded with quotes from students."–Rolling Stone

"A great book…it’s a bargain." –CNN

"Our favorite college guidebook." –Seventeen

"Provides the kind of feedback students would get from other students in a campus visit." –USA Today

Table of Contents

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1
Getting Into Colleges: A Guide for High School Students ..................................... 1
Freshman Year........................................................................................................ 2
Sophomore Year .................................................................................................... 3
Junior Year ............................................................................................................. 4
Senior Year ............................................................................................................ 5
Financial Aid 101 ................................................................................................... 7
Great Schools for 15 of the Most Popular Undergraduate Majors .......................... 8
How and Why We Produce This Book ..................................................................16
This Year’s Edition ................................................................................................ 16
The History of This Book ...................................................................................... 17
About the Survey ....................................................................................................18
How This Book Is Organized ................................................................................ 19
About the College Ranking Lists ........................................................................... 29

PART 2: SCHOOL RANKINGS AND LISTS 33
Ranking Lists ......................................................................................................... 34
Honor Roll Lists ..................................................................................................... 49
100 Best Value Colleges List.................................................................................. 50

PART 3: THE BEST 371 COLLEGES 52

PART 4: “COW TIPPING IS DEFINITELY PASSÉ HERE.” 795

PART 5: INDEXES 801
Independent Counseling ........................................................................................ 801
The Princeton Review National College Counselor Advisory Board, 2009 .......... 802
Index of Schools .................................................................................................... 803
Index of Schools by Location ................................................................................ 806
Index of Schools by Cost ....................................................................................... 810
About the Authors ................................................................................................. 813

Robert Franek Talks About The Best 371 Colleges: 2010 Edition

An Interview With Robert Franek, Author of The Best 371 Colleges: 2010 Edition

1. What is The Princeton Review and how long have you been publishing this book?
"The Princeton Review (www.princetonreview.com) is an education services company with test preparation locations across the country and abroad, editorial offices in New York City and corporate headquarters in Framingham MA.

It was founded in 1981 to help students prepare for the SAT. Our courses, books, and online resources help students research, apply to, get in to, and learn how to pay for college and graduate school. Of our more than 165 books published by Random House, our annual "Best Colleges" book is one of our most popular and unique because it's based on the largest and longest ongoing survey of students rating their colleges and reporting on their campus experiences at them. We have published our "Best Colleges" book annually since 1992. "The Best 371 Colleges: 2010 Edition" is the 18th edition of the book."

2. Why "371" colleges?
"'Best 350 Colleges' might sound catchier, but The Princeton Review doesn't start from a fixed number, then add or subtract schools to fit it. The number is based on how many schools meet our criteria for "best" and that magic number for this year is 371."

3. How do you choose the schools for the book?
"First, we choose schools based on their academics. On that end, we review data we that we gather annually from more than 1,500 schools, feedback we get from students attending the schools (their customers), and input from our staff who visit hundreds of colleges a year. We also value the opinions and suggestions of our 23-member National College Counselor Advisory Board, and independent college counselors. Second, any college we consider adding to the book must allow us to conduct surveys of its students. And last but not least: we work to have a wide representation of colleges in the book by region, size, character and type."

To read the full interview, click here to download PDF

Sample Rankings from the Princeton Review's The Best 371 Colleges

BEST CAMPUS FOOD
Based on students’ rating of campus food



DORMS LIKE PALACES:
Based on students’ rating of dorm comfort



GREAT FINANCIAL AID:
Based on students’ assessment of how satisfied they are with their financial aid package



PROFRESSORS GET HIGH MARKS:
Are your instructors good teachers?



BEST CAREER SERVICES:
Based on students’ rating of campus career/job placement services

Princeton Review in the News

Best 371 Colleges on the CBS Early Show


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