St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the state’s public honors college, is one of the nation’s best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review. The education services
company features St. Mary’s College in the new 2016 edition of its flagship college guide, “The Best 380 Colleges.”
The Princeton Review does not rank the colleges from one to 380 in any category. Instead it uses students’ ratings of their schools to compile 62 ranking lists of top 20 colleges in the book in various categories. Among the lists, St. Mary’s College is ranked fourth for the “most beautiful campus” and fifth for the “happiest students.”
In its profile on the college, The Princeton Review quotes extensively from St. Mary’s College students surveyed for the book. Speaking on the college’s classroom environment, one student said, “You are not just a number in the classroom, but an essential part of the classroom experience.”
The college’s Office of Admissions is also quoted in the profile: “St. Mary’s College of Maryland occupies a distinctive niche and represents a real value in American higher education. It is a public college, dedicated to the ideal of affordable, accessible education and committed to quality teaching and excellent programs for undergraduate students.”
In a “Survey Says” sidebar in the book’s profile on the college, The Princeton Review lists topics that St. Mary’s College students surveyed for the book were in most agreement about in their answers to survey questions. The list includes “lab facilities are great,” and “students are friendly.”
“St. Mary’s College’s outstanding academics are the chief reason we chose it for this book and we strongly recommend it to applicants,” says Robert Franek, Princeton Review’s senior vice president, publisher and author of “The Best 380 Colleges.”
Only about 15% of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and only four colleges outside the U.S. are profiled in the book. The lists in this edition are entirely based on The Princeton Review’s survey of 136,000 students (about 358 per campus on average) attending the colleges.
St. Mary’s College was also recently featured in Money Magazine as one the nation’s top schools that provide the “best value for your tuition dollar.”