Campus News 2007-2008

Pitzer College Named Among Nation’s Best in the 2009 Edition of The Princeton Review’s The Best 368 Colleges

(July 29, 2008) - Pitzer College has been named one of the nation’s best colleges and number one in the category of Race/Class Interaction in the 2009 edition The Princeton Review’s The Best 368 Colleges.

For undergraduates at Pitzer “progressive learning” and academic flexibility abound. Students tend to be “motivated” and there is a strong sense of “togetherness and community.” According to one student, “It’s a great mix of a classic college experience and a small liberal art oasis.”

Another student notes that Pitzer’s professors are “really great at being accessible outside of class whether you want to talk about things related to class, or anything else under the sun.” In addition to an excellent faculty, students praise Pitzer as “a haven for those who want to change the world” and where students are “passionate about their personal causes.”

In a “Survey Says. . .” sidebar, The Princeton Review lists topics that Pitzer students surveyed for the book were in most agreement about. The list includes: “students are friendly,” “political activism is popular,” and “great library.”

The Princeton Review’s The Best 368 Colleges ranks colleges and universities based on institutional data collected about the schools, feedback from students attending them, and visits to schools over the years. They also consider the opinions of independent college counselors, students and parents. Finally, they strive to achieve a wide representation of colleges in the book by region, size, selectivity and character. Only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and two Canadian colleges are in the book. It has two-page profiles of the schools and student survey-based ranking lists of top twenty colleges in more than sixty categories.