Joe Gutierrez Office of Strategic Communication (909) 537-5007 joeg@csusb.edu
Cal State San Bernardino is one of the best colleges in the West according to The Princeton Review in its “2019 Best Colleges: Region by Region” website. The ranking contains 129 colleges and universities in 15 western states. The listing marks the 15th year that CSUSB has been recognized by the Princeton Review as among the top colleges in the region. This prestigious listing has become an annual tradition for CSUSB. The listing can be found at The Princeton Review’s Best Western web page. “We are honored to be listed by the Princeton Review as a ‘Best in the West’ institution, but it is also a tribute to the hard work and dedication of our faculty and staff who ensure that our students receive a great education at a reasonable cost,” said Shari McMahan, CSUSB provost and vice president of academic affairs. “We chose Cal State San Bernardino and the other outstanding institutions on this list primarily for their excellent academics,” said Robert Franek, the Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief. The Princeton Review editors made their selections based on data the company collected from its survey of administrators at several hundred colleges in each region, as well as its staff visits to schools over the years, and the perspectives of college counselors and advisers whose opinions the company solicits. “We also gave careful consideration to what students enrolled at the schools reported to us about their campus experiences on our student survey for this project,” Franek added. “We designed our 80-question survey to include questions that prospective applicants might ask on a campus visit. Only schools that permit us independently to survey their students are eligible to be considered for our regional ‘best’ lists, and only schools at which we see a strong level of satisfaction among their enrolled students make it to our final slate of regional ‘best’ college selections.” The Princeton Review survey asks students to rate their colleges on several topics – from the accessibility of their professors to the quality of their science lab facilities – and answer questions about themselves, their fellow students, and their campus life. Comments from surveyed students are quoted in the school profiles on The Princeton Review site. Some student comments in the profile on CSUSB included this one: “The university provides a ‘great education’ that allows students to ‘discover amazing things about [themselves].’” Collectively, the 662 colleges on The Princeton Review’s “regional best' lists constitute about 25 percent of the nation’s 2,500 four-year colleges. The Princeton Review does not rank the 658 colleges, either overall, by region, or in various categories. However, some schools on the “regional best” lists that also appear in The Princeton Review’s book, “The Best 384 Colleges: 2019 Edition,” appear on some of the company’s 62 ranking lists of “top 20 colleges” that are published in that book. All of those ranking lists are based entirely on the company’s surveys of students at the 384 schools. The 129 colleges that The Princeton Review chose for its “Best in the West” 2019 list are located in 15 states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Some of those institutions in California include Cal Poly Pomona, Long Beach State University, Sonoma State University, the University of California, Los Angeles, Claremont McKenna College, Stanford University and the University of Southern California. The Princeton Review also designated 225 colleges in the Northeast, 159 in the Midwest, 143 in the Southeast and four abroad as best in their locales on the company’s “2019 Best Colleges: Region by Region” lists. The Princeton Review is an education services company known for its tutoring, test-prep courses, books and other student resources. The company is not affiliated with Princeton University.