Again this year, Catawba College is one of the country's best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review. The education services company features the school in the new 2011 edition of its guidebook, "The Best 373 Colleges" (Random House / Princeton Review, August 3, 2010).
Only about 15% of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and two Canadian colleges are profiled in the book, which is The Princeton Review's flagship annual college guide. It includes detailed profiles of the colleges with school rating scores in eight categories, plus ranking lists of top 20 schools in 62 categories based on The Princeton Review's surveys of students attending the colleges.
In its profile on Catawba College, The Princeton Review praises the school for its willingness "to take a chance on some applicants who may not make the cut at Davidson, Duke, or Chapel Hill" and quotes extensively from Catawba College students who The Princeton Review surveyed for the book. Among their comments about their campus experiences: "There is almost always something going on around campus that you can get into. Everyone goes to the same places – movies, dinner, bars, clubs, on-campusEvents – and hangs out and has fun." "The more activities that you participate in, the more fun you will have on campus." "You would be hard-pressed to find anyone on campus who isn’t involved in something else other than just going to class. This involvement in school really makes Catawba as great as it is."
Says Robert Franek, Princeton Review's V.P., Publishing and author of "The Best 373 Colleges," "We commend Catawba College for its outstanding academics, which is the primary criteria for our choice of schools for the book. 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. We also work to keep a wide representation of colleges in the book by region, size, selectivity and character."
The Princeton Review's 62 ranking lists in "The Best 373 Colleges" are entirely based on its survey of 122,000 students (about 325 per campus on average) attending the colleges in the book. The 80-question survey asks students to rate their schools on several topics and report on their campus experiences at them. Topics range from student assessments of their professors, administrators, financial aid, and campus food. Other ranking lists are based on student reports about their student body's political leanings, race/class relations, and gay community acceptance.
In a "Survey Says. . ." sidebar in the book's profile on Catawba College, The Princeton Review lists topics that Catawba students surveyed for the book were in most agreement about in their answers to survey questions. The list includes: "Students are friendly," "Students are happy," and "Everyone loves the Catawba Indians."
The school profiles in "The Best 373 Colleges" also have ratings that are based largely on institutional data The Princeton Review collected during the 2009-10 academic year. The ratings are scores on a scale of 60 to 99 that are tallied in eight categories. Among them are ratings for Admissions Selectivity, Financial Aid, Fire Safety, and Green, a rating The Princeton Review introduced in 2008 that is a measure of school's commitment to environmentally related policies, practices and education. Among the ratings in the profile on Catawba are scores of 86 for Quality of Life and 78 for Green.
The Princeton Review posts the school profiles and ranking lists in "The Best 373 Colleges" on its site www.PrincetonReview.com at which users can read FAQs about the book, the survey, and the criteria for each of the ratings and rankings.
The Princeton Review is known for its tutoring and classroom test preparation courses, books, and college and graduate school admission services. Its corporate headquarters is in Framingham, MA, and editorial offices are in New York City. It is not affiliated with Princeton University and it is not a magazine.
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