Submitted by University of Puget Sound
University of Puget Sound is one of the nation’s best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review. The education services company features the national liberal arts college in today’s 2015 edition of its annual college guide, “The Best 379 Colleges.”
In the review’s profile of Puget Sound, students responding to a survey are quoted saying that the school is “the ideal learning environment, with plenty of opportunity for both academic and personal growth.” Students say they are encouraged to “branch out and go beyond their comfort zone in class and outside of class.” Puget Sound was named as a Best Western College in the regional rankings and as a Green College in Washington state.
Only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and only four colleges outside the United States are included in the popular college guide. It includes detailed profiles of the colleges, with rating scores in eight categories, plus numerous “Top 20” ranking lists. These are based on The Princeton Review’s surveys of 130,000 students attending the colleges. The colleges are not ranked on an overall 1 to 379 basis.
“University of Puget Sound offers outstanding academics, which is the chief reason we selected it for the book, said Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s senior vice president and author of ‘The Best 379 Colleges’.“ We base our choices primarily on data we obtain in our annual surveys of administrators at these schools and at hundreds of other colleges. We take into account input we get from our staff, our 27-member National College Counselor Advisory Board, our personal visits to schools, and the sizable amount of feedback we get from our surveys of students attending these schools.”
The review notes Puget Sound’s 11.5-to-one ratio of students to faculty and lists its extensive career placement services—including an alumni network, internships, and experiential learning. It also lists prominent alumni including Deanna Oppenheimer ’80 P’11, P’14, former CEO of U.K. Retail Banking for Barclays; Richard M. Brooks ’82, president and CEO of the Zumiez skateboarding and surf lifestyle retail chain; J Mariner Kemper ’95, chair and CEO for UMB Financial Corp.; and Rachel E. Martin ’96, host of Weekend Edition Sunday for National Public Radio.
Students responding to the survey’s questionnaire also describe the Puget Sound campus as “friendly and socially minded” and made up of “talented people who are trying to change the world.”
The Princeton Review does not rank the colleges academically or from 1 to 379 in any category. Instead it reports 62 ranking lists of the top 20 colleges in various categories. The lists are entirely based on The Princeton Review’s survey of 130,000 students (about 343 per campus on average) attending the colleges. The 80-question survey asks students to rate their 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 school’s library, career services, and student body’s political leanings. The Princeton Review explains the basis for each ranking list here. To view “The Best 379 Colleges,” visit the Princeton Review’s website here.
Photos courtesy of Ross Mulhausen, University of Puget Sound.
