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College Selected Among The Best 379 Colleges in Nation by The Princeton Review; Also Honored for Best College Theater and Great Town-Gown Relations

Posted on Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Westminster College is one of the country's best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review.  The education services company features Westminster in the new 2015 edition of its annual college guide, "The Best 379 Colleges."

Westminster earned recognition (ranked 20th) in the "Best College Theater" category and was included in the "Town-Gown Relations are Great" category.

Only about 15 percent of America's 2,500 four-year colleges and four colleges outside the U.S. are included in the book.

Students praised the "extremely accessible and helpful" professors, supportive classmates, great career services, safe campus, and opportunities for involvement. One student said, "Contrary to popular belief, Westminster College, not Disneyland, is the happiest place on earth."

The guide's editors noted: "Westminster College has remained intent on crafting a personalized learning process for students, with the aim of turning out well-rounded individuals who can live and affect the world in a positive way. The challenging liberal arts curriculum provides a broad foundation for academic study, and the school heavily stresses the application of what's learned by pushing students to prepare themselves for the future using real-life simulations.

"At this very happy place, the administration always keeps the interests of the students in mind, the classes are small, and students get the attention they need. Westminster runs on personal relationships between faculty and students, and even the janitor knows your name. The low student/teacher ratio means the extremely accessible and helpful professors are devoted to ensuring that every last student understands the material."

"Westminster College offers outstanding academics, which is the chief reason we selected it for the book," according to Robert Franek, Princeton Review's senior vice president of publishing and author of "The Best 379 Colleges."  "We base our choices primarily on data we obtain in our annual surveys 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.  We also work to maintain a wide representation of colleges in the book by region, size, selectivity, and character."

The rankings are based on The Princeton Review's survey of 130,000 students.  The 80-question survey asks students to rate their own schools on several topics and report on their campus experiences. Click here for additional information.