Rice ranks No. 2 for quality of life and for race/class interaction

Rice ranks No. 2 for quality of life and for race/class interaction

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Rice University ranks No. 2 nationally for best quality of life and for plenty of interaction among students of different races and class in the 2009 edition of the Princeton Review’s “Best 368 Colleges.”

Based on a survey of 120,000 students attending the 368 colleges in the book, Rice also ranks No. 15 for “happiest students.”

The annual college guide rates Rice as one of the country’s best institutions for undergraduate education. Only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and two Canadian colleges are profiled in the book. The profiles reflect both the student survey and information provided by the institutions.

Robert Franek, Princeton Review’s vice president for publishing, said the schools in the book were chosen for their outstanding academics. “We evaluated them based on institutional data we collect about the schools, feedback from students attending them and our visits to schools over the years,” he said. “We also consider the opinions of independent college counselors, students and parents we hear from yearlong.”

The guide tallies rankings in 62 categories based on input from students and publishes the top 20 colleges for each category. 

The category for quality of life is based on students’ assessment of the beauty, safety and location of the campus; comfort of their dorms; quality of campus food; ease of getting around campus and dealing with administrators; friendliness of fellow students; interaction with different types of students; quality of the school’s relationship with the local community; and students’ overall happiness. The category for race/class interaction is based on students’ perception that black/white, rich/poor and other different types of students interact often and easily. Rice has consistently ranked in the top 10 in both of these categories over the past several years and placed No. 1 in the 2007 edition.

In its profile of Rice, the Princeton Review quotes extensively from Rice students who were surveyed for the book. Among their candid comments:

• “Rice provides an Ivy League education without the Eastern establishment elitism and cutthroat competition.”
• “Rice University is dedicated to its students, whether in the classroom through providing top-notch professors who are approachable … or just around campus by catering to students’ professed real needs and desires” by an administration that is “extremely sensitive to students’ needs and concerns.”
• The residential college system is “hands down the best thing about Rice.” It “ensures a lot of mixing among different majors, races, interests and geographic origins.”
• Hometown Houston … “is not the prettiest or most pedestrian-friendly city in America, but it is one of the most vibrant, futuristic places you can live right now, and the opportunities for research within the Houston community are unparalleled.”

For the complete profile of Rice, visit www.princetonreview.com.

In the 2008 edition of “America’s Best-Value Colleges” — a separate guide also published by Princeton Review — Rice is ranked as the nation’s No. 1 best value among private colleges.