How did you choose the schools in The Best 390 Colleges, 2025 Edition?  
We selected these colleges primarily based on our high opinion of their academics. We monitor colleges continuously and annually collect data on more than 2,000 schools. Each year we also visit scores of schools, and meet with or talk to hundreds of college administrators. We pay close attention to feedback we get about colleges from students, parents, educators, and our own staff at Â鶹ɫÇéƬ locations across the country. We also value the opinions of our college counselors and advisors, particularly our 26-member National College Counselor Advisory Board, whom you can find listed here.

There are two key criteria that have influenced our selection of schools for this book since the first edition in 1992:

  1. We work to have a wide representation of outstanding colleges in the book. These include public and private institutions from all parts of the country. There are small- and large-sized, traditional and nontraditional, highly selective and open-admission schools, plus some that are very expensive and others that are great bargains. You'll also find schools with religious affiliations, historically black colleges and universities, men's colleges, women's colleges, and some schools acclaimed for their unique focus on science, engineering, technology, or other specialized fields.
  2. Any college we consider adding to the guide must agree to allow us to conduct independent surveys of its students. What students say about their schools and their campus life is very important to us and to prospective applicants and their parents—especially those who are unable to visit the campuses. We share the opinions we gather from surveyed students in our narrative profiles about the schools. Our student surveys (168,000 of them!) are also the exclusive basis for our college rankings.

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How many ranking lists are in the book, and how did you compile them? 
The Best 390 Colleges has 50 ranking lists, each one identifying the top 25 colleges (of the 390 schools in the book—not of all colleges in the nation) in a specific category. The categories cover a range of topics that applicants might want to know or ask on a campus visit. We report rankings about academics, administrative services, financial aid, campus amenities, the student body's political leanings, race/class interaction, LGBTQ community acceptance, social life, and much more. All 50 ranking lists are based solely on what students told us about their own colleges on our 89-question student survey. You can find more information on what each ranking list is based on here .
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Why don't you have one list that ranks all the schools in the book?
We don't believe that any one school is the best overall. While academics are important—and some other college rankings focus only on academics—we believe lists that purport to rank schools academically aren't useful and are actually counterproductive. Every school under the #1 spot on such lists is perceived to be "lesser" academically than the one above it. The fact is no one school is, in all subjects, for all majors, for all students, the academically best in the nation. It's not which school is best academically (there's no such thing) but which school is best for you that's important.

We believe all 390 schools in the book are academically outstanding. But we don't think academics should be the exclusive reason for choosing a school—and in most cases, it isn't. Among other crucial factors (such as location, cost, and size), the campus culture is very important. The schools featured in The Best 390 Colleges—our picks of the cream of the crop colleges and universities—comprise only the top 13 percent of all four-year colleges in the nation. These are all very different schools with different and wonderful things to offer.  
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How many students were surveyed for your ranking lists? 
The ranking lists in The Best 390 Colleges were based on our surveys of more than 168,000 students. That's an average of 430 students per school, though that number varies depending on the size of the student body. Over the years, we've surveyed students in schools like Deep Springs College (almost 100% of the 30-student campus) as well as those like Clemson University, University of Virginia, and United States Naval Academy (more than 1,000 collegians from each).
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How is the survey conducted? 
All of the surveys upon which the rankings in this edition of the book are based were completed online. For detailed information, see Surveying Colleges: How It Works.
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When was the survey conducted? 
We receive surveys online from students at the schools in this book (as well as from other institutions) all year, so a sizable number of the surveys came to us in the 2023–2024 academic year. In addition, we formally re-survey each school in the book at a minimum of every three years, so some surveys upon which this edition's rankings are based are from the 2022–2023 school year and some from the 2021–2022 school year. We conduct these surveys more often than once every three years if the colleges request that we do so (and if we are able to accommodate that request) or if we deem it necessary for one reason or another. And of course, surveys we receive from students outside of their schools' normal survey cycles are always factored into the subsequent year's ranking calculations, so our pool of student survey data is continuously refreshed.
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What was the survey format? 
The survey has almost 90 questions across four categories. We ask students to tell us about themselves, their school's academics/administration, campus life and their fellow students' attitudes and opinions. For the multiple-choice questions, survey respondents indicate their answers on a five-point grid. The headers for the grids vary, depending on the type of question asked. They may range from "Strongly Agree" to "Strongly Disagree" or from "Excellent" to "Poor." In some cases the range is in percentages, from "0–20%" to "81–100%." Each college is given a score based on its students' answers to each survey question. This enables us to compare student opinions from college to college—apples to apples, as it were—and on that basis, we tally the rankings. We also have several open-ended "comments" areas on the survey inviting students to tell us in their own words what they think of their schools, and we choose the most representative comments for inclusion in the narrative profiles.
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My college is not on any of the ranking lists. Why? 
That could be because the college isn't among the 390 in the book. Our ranking lists are based only on our surveys of students at the schools in the book. Or it could be that the school is in the book, but there wasn't a high enough consensus of opinion among the students we surveyed in response to any of the survey questions for the school to make a list. However, only 25 percent of the colleges in the book aren't on any of its 50 ranking lists.
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How can I complete a survey about my school? 
It's easy, and it only takes 10 to 15 minutes. Just click here. You may submit a survey about your school once every academic year if you like, and we encourage you to do so (but our site will only accept one survey from you per year: it's not possible to "stuff the ballot box").
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The profiles of colleges in this book and on your site have "ratings." What's the difference between the ratings and the rankings? 
That's a good question because people sometimes confuse ratings for rankings. Our 50 rankings are lists of the top 25 schools in the book in rank order, 1 to 25, on various topics. They are based entirely on our surveys of students at the 390 schools in the book who complete our 89-question survey. The survey asks them questions ranging from how good their profs are as teachers to how they rate their college city/town. Only schools in The Best 390 Colleges can appear on our 50 ranking lists. See Â鶹ɫÇéƬ's Rankings Methodology for more info.

Our ratings are numerical scores on a scale of 60 to 99 that we give to every school in the book in eight categories: Academics, Admissions Selectivity, Financial Aid, Quality of Life, Professors Interesting, Professors Accessible, Fire Safety, and Green. The ratings show how each school measures up on a fixed scale. We tally the ratings primarily based on institutional data that we get from schools: some ratings factor in data from our student surveys. All schools in our books The Best 390 Colleges and those we designate on our site as Best Value Colleges or "regional bests" —Best Mid-Atlantic, Best Midwest, Best Northeast, Best South, Best Southwest, Best West, Best International—receive our eight ratings. Schools from which we have not received sufficient data to compile a rating for a particular category receive a rating of 60* (sixty with an asterisk) for that category. See Â鶹ɫÇéƬ's College Ratings for more info.
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What's new in this edition of the book?

We added five colleges to this edition: State University of New York—University at Albany, Catawba College, Taylor University, Eastern Michigan University, and University of St. Francis (IL).

All of the data in the book is of course updated—we reach out directly to our contacts at the colleges to collect that info and we update the statistics in each of our school profiles every year. We also give every college the opportunity to review, fact check, and report to us any incorrect information in its profile before our book goes to press. We also included our standard Honor Roll lists of schools that received our highest possible score (99) in our rating tallies for Financial Aid, Fire Safety, and Green. Our tallies of our eight rating scores for all 390 schools are also annually done.

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