Princeton Review College Guides Open New Chapter With Green Rating
The Princeton Review, creator of the hugely popular annual series of college guides, unveils the results of its new green rating system for institutions of higher learning. Read More
The Princeton Review, creator of the hugely popular annual series of college guides, opens a new chapter today with the debut of its green rating for institutions of higher learning.
“The Best 368 Colleges, 2009 Edition,” the first of three Princeton Review guides to hit bookstore shelves this summer, publishes today. It includes green ratings for hundreds of colleges and universities that responded to a survey covering environmentally responsible practices and commitment as well as the degree to which students are prepared for “citizenship in a world defined by environmental challenges.”
EcoAmerica, an environmental nonprofit consumer research and marketing organization, partnered with The Princeton Review to develop the questions for the green rating system.
In unveiling the new ratings dimension, The Princeton Review drew up a 2009 Green Rating Honor Roll to list the 11 colleges that attained green rating scores of 99, the highest possible.
Those making the list are: Arizona State University’s Tempe campus; Bates College in Lewiston, Maine; Binghamton University (the State University of New York at Binghamton); College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine; Emory University in Atlanta, Ga.; Georgia Institute of Technology, also in Atlanta; Harvard College in Cambridge, Mass.; University of New Hampshire in Durham; University of Oregon in Eugene; University of Washington in Seattle and Yale University in New Haven, Conn.
The schools on the Honor Roll are listed in alphabetical order as they were rated, not ranked. The Princeton Review makes a distinction between the two types of evaluations. The ratings are based on numerical scores that are derived from the data collected from the schools. The green rating is one of eight ratings categories that The Princeton Review includes in its profiles of colleges.
In contrast, The Princeton Review college guide rankings are based on student surveys. Some 120,000 students responded to surveys that provided rankings for attributes such as “Best Classroom Experience,” Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. ranks No. 1 in this category for 2009, and “Party Schools,” for which the University of Florida, Gainesville, takes the crown for 2009.
The green ratings will be included in The Princeton Review’s “The Best Northeastern Colleges” and “The Complete Book of Colleges.” The two guides will be available for sale starting August 5. Like the “Best Colleges” guide, they are published by Random House and the Princeton Review.