Westminster makes list of best colleges

By Denise Dick

Staff report

new wilmington, pa.

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 2011 edition of its annual college guide, “The Best 373 Colleges.”

Westminster also is honored as one of “Best in the Northeast.” For the third- straight year, Westminster earned special recognition for its relationship with the community in the “Town-Gown Relations are Great” category, and Westminster’s student radio station, WWNW 88.9FM, earned recognition as one of the “Best College Radio Stations.”

Hiram College also was recognized in the publication.

Only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and two Canadian colleges are included in the book.

The guide’s editors noted Westminster’s increasing selectivity, cozy atmosphere and well-regarded pre- professional programs. Students surveyed described Westminster as a place “where professors are dedicated to helping students on all levels from within the classroom and outside of class. In fact, professors are known to call students on the weekends at home to discuss coursework.”

Other comments included: “The community is like a family bound together with blue and white pride and a love for the people who are attending and those who have moved on. Once you become a part of the Westminster tradition, it lasts a lifetime.”

Robert Franek, Princeton Review’s senior vice president of publishing and author of “The Best 373 Colleges,” commended the college for its academics, a primary criteria for the schools in the book.

“Our choices are based on institutional data we collect about schools, our visits to the schools over the years, feedback we gather from students attending the schools and the opinions of our staff and our 28-member National College Counselor Advisory Board,” he said.

Franek reiterated the comments about Hiram.

“We also work to keep a wide representation of colleges in the book by region, size, selectivity and character,” he said.

In its profile on Hiram, the book praises the school for its “big-school opportunities in a small-school environment” and quotes students.

Among their comments about their campus experiences are: “small classes of no more than 30 students and the intimate nature of the learning [environment] keep us from feeling lost in a sea of students.”

The rankings are based on The Princeton Review’s survey of 122,000 students. The Princeton Review does not rank the colleges in the book in any single category, nor do the rankings reflect The Princeton Review’s opinion of the schools.