The college search is complicated and confusing. There are hundreds of ranking list, but many include student 
happiness as a factor. Parents and students want to know which colleges will actually prepare students for the real world, for employment, and which colleges go beyond the classroom.
A new book by Princeton Review, Colleges That Create Futures: 50 Schools That Launch Careers By Going Beyond the Classroom is aiming to do just that.
“The 50 colleges all have outstanding academics,” the release from The Princeton Review noted. “But the programs and services they offer outside the classroom are, for many students, as transformative and enabling as the knowledge the students gain inside their seminars, science labs or lecture halls.”
So how are these colleges judged and ranked?
Obviously, all of the 50 colleges have outstanding academic programs. But we need to know more about the programs and services outside of the classroom. These 50 Colleges also have:
- excellent career centers
- cooperative education
- service learning opportunities
- wide range of internships
- experiential learning programs
- undergrads in research with faculty
- civic engagement on campus
- high participation in community service
- study abroad programs
- alumni associations with opportunities for current students
- impressive numbers of graduates with outstanding job offers and/or acceptances to post-grad studies
Only three Texas universities made the cut- Rice University in Houston, University of Texas at Austin, and University of Houston. UT and UH are two of the only five colleges with more than 25,000 students that made the list of 50 colleges. The only Arizona college to make the list was Arizona State University, while Colorado had zero colleges on the list.
When separated by tuition, only six colleges charge student tuition of less than $10,000: ASU, CUNY, SUNY, University of Florida, University of Houston, and University of Texas. The majority of the colleges were listed as having tuition of $45,000-$50,000/year.
The Princeton Review’s 50 “Colleges That Create Futures”
Arizona State University
Babson College (Mass.)
Bryn Mawr College (Pa.)
City University of New York—Hunter College
Claremont McKenna College (Calif.)
College of Charleston (S.C.)
The College of William & Mary (Va.)
Columbia University (N.Y.)
DePauw University (Ind.)
Drew University (N.J.)
Duke University (N.C.)
Franklin & Marshall College (Pa.)
The George Washington University (D.C.)
Gettysburg University (Pa.)
Harvey Mudd College (Calif.)
Haverford College (Pa.)
Hobart and William Smith Colleges (N.Y.)
Lehigh University (Pa.)
Marist College (N.Y.)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Mass.)
Middlebury College (Vt.)
Northeastern University (Mass.)
Oberlin College (Ohio)
Pitzer College (Calif.)
Pomona College (Calif.)
Princeton University (N.J.)
Rhodes College (Tenn.)
Rice University (Texas)
Smith College (Mass.)
St. Lawrence University (N.Y.)
Stanford University (Calif.)
State University of New York at Binghamton
Stevens Institute of Technology (N.J.)
Swarthmore University (Pa.)
University of California—San Diego
University of Dayton (Ohio)
University of Florida
University of Houston (Texas)
University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
University of Notre Dame (Ind.)
University of Pennsylvania
University of Pittsburgh (Pa.)
University of Southern California
The University of Texas at Austin
Vassar College (N.Y.)
Villanova University (Pa.)
Wagner College (N.Y.)
Wake Forest University (N.C.)
Washington University in St. Louis (Mo.)
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Mass.)
