Baylor Featured In Princeton Review 'Best 351 Colleges' Guide

by Alan Hunt

Baylor University is one of the nation's best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review, the New York-based company known for its test-prep and education services. Baylor is one of 351 schools featured in the just-published 2004 edition of The Princeton Review annual college guide, "The Best 351 Colleges."
"We regard the schools in this book as 'the crème of the crop' institutions for undergraduate education," said Robert Franek, assistant vice president of guidebook publishing at The Princeton Review. Only about 10 percent of the colleges in America, and only two Canadian colleges are in the book. Each one offers an outstanding academic program."
Franek said they select schools for the guide based on "our knowledge of and visits to them, on data we review about them, and on the opinions of independent college counselors, students and parents we talk to and survey."
The Princeton Review claims its college guide is unique in offering both two-page profiles on the colleges and college ranking lists based on what students attending the schools report about their college and campus experiences at them. The ranking lists in the 2004 edition are based on The Princeton Review's survey of 106,000 students at the 351 colleges in the book.
The survey asks students 70 questions about their own school's academics, campus life and student body, as well as their study hours, politics and opinions.
Baylor also is featured in The Princeton Review's newest guidebook, The Best Western Colleges, which Franek says profiles the top 121 schools from 15 states with both statistical and student opinion-based information.

U.S.News & World Report Rankings

Last week, the U.S.News & World Report's 2004 edition of America's Best Colleges showed Baylor placing 78th out of 248 top national doctoral-granting universities included in the rankings.
The rating puts Baylor tied for fourth position among Big 12 schools included in the rankings and in fifth place among the 16 Texas universities listed. Also featured was the undergraduate business program at Baylor's Hankamer School of Business, which jumped to 53rd place in the rankings from 62nd last year, and the school's entrepreneurship program, which is again ranked in the U.S. News top 10, as the ninth best entrepreneurship program in the nation.
Also climbing in the U.S. News rankings is Baylor's engineering program, which is rated 19th in the nation in the survey of 145 best undergraduate engineering programs without doctoral programs. This is one spot up over last year when Baylor's program was ranked 20th, and a jump of seven places over 2001, when Baylor ranked 26th in the listing. Baylor is ranked highest of the four Texas schools included in the survey.