Once again, Eckerd College is one of the nation’s best institutions for undergraduate education according to The Princeton Review. The New York-based education services company known for its test-prep courses features Eckerd in the just-published 2014 edition of its annual book, The Best 378 Colleges. In addition, Eckerd is one of 138 “Best Southeastern” schools.
In its profile on Eckerd, The Princeton Review quotes extensively from Eckerd students surveyed for the book. Reactions to faculty include, “There is a ‘level of genuine care’ from the teachers,” and “Not once has an email been ignored that I have sent to a professor.” Commentary about their fellow students is also upbeat, “Every student is Friendly, approachable and has a general positive attitude about being here at Eckerd.”
Only about 15% of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and three colleges outside the U.S.A. are profiled in the book, which is The Princeton Review’s flagship college guide. It includes detailed profiles of the colleges with rating scores for all schools in eight categories, plus ranking lists of top 20 schools in the book in 62 categories based on The Princeton Review’s surveys of 126,000 students attending the colleges.
“Eckerd College offers outstanding academics, which is the primary criteria for our choice of schools for the book,” said Robert Franek, Princeton Review’s Senior VP/Publisher and author of The Best 378 Colleges. “We base our selections primarily on data we obtain in our annual institutional data surveys. We also take into account input we get from our staff, our 35-member National College Counselor Advisory Board, our personal visits to schools, and the wide range of feedback we get from our surveys of students attending these schools.”
The Princeton Review does not rank the colleges in the book academically or from 1 to 378 in any category. Instead it reports in the book 62 ranking lists of “top 20” colleges in various categories. The lists are entirely based on The Princeton Review’s survey of 126,000 students (about 333 per campus on average) attending the colleges in the book and not on The Princeton Review’s opinion of the schools. The 80-question survey asks students to rate their own schools on several topics and report on their campus experiences at them. Topics range from assessments of their professors as teachers to opinions about their financial aid. A new ranking list in this year’s edition of the book names the schools at which students gave their school’s science/lab facilities the strongest ratings. The Princeton Review explains the basis for each ranking list in the book here.
The Princeton Review is an education services company known for its test-prep courses, classes, tutoring, books, and other student resources. Headquartered in Framingham, Mass., the Company is not affiliated with Princeton University, and it is not a magazine.
