Knox in Princeton Review "Best Colleges"

Knox College is one of the country's best institutions for undergraduate education, according to the 2010 edition of "The Best 371 Colleges," published this week by The Princeton Review. Just 15% of 2,500 four-year colleges and universities in the United States and Canada are profiled in the book.

"We are pleased that students see Knox as one of the best colleges in the country," said Paul Steenis, dean of admission. "Knox students get a challenging education both in the classroom and in their experiences outside the classroom."

"We commend Knox College for its outstanding academics, which is the primary criteria for our choice of schools for the book," said the book's author Robert Franek, Princeton Review's vice president for publishing. "We make our choices based on institutional data we gather about schools, feedback from students attending them, and input from our staff who visit hundreds of colleges a year."

The Best 371 Colleges includes detailed profiles of the colleges with school rating scores in eight categories, plus ranking lists of top 20 schools in 62 categories based on The Princeton Review's surveys of students attending the colleges.

Especially notable at Knox, according the Princeton Review profile, are the school's theatre program and its student-run radio station. Knox's highly regarded theatre program ranked 15th, and the student-run radio station, WVKC, ranked 9th. Princeton Review's rankings are based on surveys of current students.

"A college's appearance on a ranking list is entirely the result of a high consensus among its surveyed students about a topic, compared with that of students at other schools answering the same survey questions," Franek said.

All of the Princeton Review's 62 ranking lists in "The Best 371 Colleges" are based on its survey of 122,000 students -- about 325 per campus on average. The 80-question survey asks students to rate their schools on several topics and report on their campus experiences at them. Topics range from student assessments of their professors, administrators, financial aid, and campus food. Other ranking lists are based on student reports about their student body's political leanings, race/class relations, gay community acceptance, and other aspects of campus life.

Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 47 states and 48 countries. Knox's 'Old Main' is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.

• Knox was also named a Top 50 Best Value Private College by the Princeton Review.