Randolph faculty ranked in top 20 nationally by The Princeton Review

Randolph College has been ranked 19th in the nation for most accessible professors and 17th for Best Health Services by the Princeton Review as part of the 2018 edition of its flagship college guide, The Best 382 Colleges.

This is not the first ranking that recognizes Randolph and its faculty. Just recently, the College was ranked in the top 50 among small colleges for best faculty by College Values Online.

Only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and two colleges outside the country are profiled in Princeton Review’s book, which is one of its most popular guides. Published annually since 1992, it includes detailed profiles of the colleges with rating scores for all schools in eight categories, plus ranking lists of top 20 schools in the book in 62 categories based on The Princeton Review’s surveys of students attending the colleges.

“We chose Randolph College for this book because it offers outstanding academics,” said Robert Franek, Princeton Review’s Editor-in-Chief and author of The Best 382 Colleges. “Our selections are primarily based on our surveys of administrators at several hundred four-year colleges. We also visit dozens of colleges each year and give considerable weight to opinions of our staff and our 24-member National College Counselor Advisory Board.

“Most importantly, we look at valuable feedback we get from each school’s customers—our surveys of students attending them,” Franek added. “We also keep a wide representation of colleges in the book by region, size, selectivity and character.”

Franek visited Randolph personally in April, when the College hosted the 2017 Heick Symposium on College Admissions.

In The Best 382 Colleges, The Princeton Review praises Randolph for its academic programs and individual student attention, and includes quotes extensively from students surveyed for the book.

“My professors are amazing!” one student said. “Learning is interesting and fun here, and professors are eager to answer questions and provide resources to supplement lectures and experiments. Often professors list their home phone numbers on syllabi to allow students to contact them outside of office hours. Every professor replies to email quickly, and professors are all very easy to communicate with in the classroom and one-on-one.”

Randolph is also credited for its vibrant campus life and highly active student organizations. Specifically mentioned are the College’s athletics events, campus-wide games like Humans vs. Zombies, the Even-Odd class rivalry, Skeller Sings, and off-campus outdoor activities like hiking, biking, and swimming.

In addition, Randolph’s diverse student body is recognized. “Being such a small campus, it is hard not [to] develop lots of friends from several different social groups,” one student said.

The Princeton Review does not rank the colleges from 1 to 382 in any category. Instead it uses students’ ratings of their schools to compile 62 ranking lists of top 20 colleges in the book in various categories.

The lists in this edition are entirely based on The Princeton Review’s survey of 137,000 students (about 358 per campus on average) attending the colleges. The 80-question survey asks students to rate their schools on several topics and report on their campus experiences at them. Topics range from their assessments of their professors as teachers to opinions about their school’s career services.

The Princeton Review explains the basis for each ranking list at http://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings/ranking-methodology.