NEW YORK — The Princeton Review, an education services company, named Campbell University one of the best colleges in the Southeast in its “2014 Best Colleges: Region by Region.”
Campbell was one of 138 colleges in the Southeast and one of only 643 in the nation selected a regional best. That constitutes about 25 percent of the nation’s 2,500 four-year colleges. The Princeton Review also designated best colleges in the Northeast, West and Midwest.
“We’re pleased to recommend these colleges to users of our site as the best schools to earn their undergrad degrees,” said Robert Franek, The Princeton Review’s senior vice president and publisher. “We chose these as our ‘regional best’ colleges mainly for their excellent academic programs.”
Campbell was founded in 1887 as a private K-12 boarding school. Today, it’s a Level VI university that is home to schools of law, divinity, pharmacy and medicine, and that offers more than 100 degrees across the liberal arts, health sciences and professions. On Monday, the university held the first day of classes for the charter class of its School of Osteopathic Medicine, the first medical school to open in North Carolina in 35 years.
To come up with its “Best Colleges,” The Princeton Review began with a list of several hundred schools in each region and winnowed it based on institutional data collected from each school, campus visits over the years and opinions of the staff, as well as the recommendations of college counselors and advisors, Franek said. What students at the schools reported to the Princeton Review were also taken into account. Only schools that permit the Princeton Review to independently survey their students are eligible to be considered for the regional ‘best’ lists.
For this project, The Princeton Review asked students attending the colleges to rate their own schools on several issues — from the accessibility of their professors to quality of the campus food — and answer questions about themselves, their fellow students, and their campus life.
The Princeton Review does not rank the 643 colleges in its “2014 Best Colleges: Region by Region” list hierarchically or by region or in various categories.