Our Undergrad Education: One of the Best

Issue Date: 
August 24, 2015

The Princeton Review’s 2016 edition of its annual college guide, The Best 380 Colleges, has ranked Pitt as one of the nation’s best institutions for undergraduate education.

Only about 15 percent of the nation’s 2,500 four-year colleges and only four colleges outside the United States are profiled in the book, which is The Princeton Review’s flagship college guide.

“The University of Pittsburgh offers outstanding academics, which is the chief reason we selected it for the book,” said Robert Franek, The Princeton Review’s senior vice president, publisher, and author of The Best 380 Colleges.

“We make our selections primarily based on data we collect through our annual surveys of administrators at several hundred four-year colleges,” Franek added. “Additionally, we give considerable weight to observations from our school visits, opinions of our staff and our 23-member National College Counselor Advisory Board, and an unparalleled amount of feedback we get from our surveys of students attending these schools.”

The Princeton Review does not rank the colleges academically or from 1 to 380 in any category. It does, however, provide an eight-category rating that measures how each school performs in areas such as “Quality of Life” and “Green” initiatives. 

The Best 380 Colleges also provides 62 ranking lists of the “Top 20” colleges in various categories. These rankings are based on The Princeton Review’s survey of 136,000 students (358 per campus, on average) attending the colleges. In those student-based category listings, Pitt ranked No. 7 in “College City Gets High Marks.”

The guide’s general profile on Pitt quotes students who praised the University’s academics, research, value, and world-class education. Within the publication, students extolled the presence of strong programs across the undergraduate schools at Pitt as well as the plethora of research opportunities available.

The Princeton Review’s school profiles and ranking and rating lists in The Best 380 Colleges are posted at www.princetonreview.com.

The Princeton Review is an education-services company known for its test-prep courses, tutoring, books, and other student resources. Headquartered in Natick, Mass., the company is not affiliated with Princeton University.