With the 2017 Princeton Review rankings now posted, it’s time to take a look at how the Garden State’s institutions of higher learning fared. The following New Jersey schools made the list for the 381 Best Colleges:
Drew
Monmouth
NJIT
Princeton
Rider
Rutgers
Seton Hall
Stevens
TCNJ
The Princeton Review’s list of the Best Northeastern colleges also includes Ramapo and Stockton, but they are absent from the overall best list.
My takeaways:
- The list seems to be the same as last year's. The only copy I could find of the 2016 list is from an Amazon book preview and I'm not looking through every college listed to absolutely confirm there's no additions or removals. Nevertheless, a Ctrl+F search confirms that all nine schools in the new list were also in last year's list. A Ctrl+F search also confirms that the remaining New Jersey schools on the Forbes list, Montclair, Rowan, Stockton, and FDU Metropolitan, did not appear in Princeton Review's list last year, along with Ramapo.
- In my take on the Forbes list, I mentioned that the ranking of the top seven colleges remained the same. Those top seven colleges - Princeton, Rutgers, TCNJ, Stevens, Drew, Seton Hall, and NJIT - all appear on the Princeton Review list. Since the Princeton Review doesn't rank the colleges by overall quality, this list doesn't determine how the New Jersey schools ultimately stack up against each other, but it's telling that the consistently best New Jersey colleges on the Forbes list are on the Princeton Review list. Their presence on the Princeton Review list reinforces that they're supposed to be the best in the state.
- Once again, Monmouth remains the only New Jersey college to not appear on the Forbes' list, but to appear on the Princeton Review list. This is particularly interesting when there are four New Jersey colleges appearing on the Forbes list that do not appear on the Princeton Review list and the Princeton Review's list is more selective. Since the Princeton Review does have entries on the schools it does not include in its lists, while Forbes does not, I still attribute this difference to Forbes not omitting schools because they aren't good enough, but because they only look at a select number of schools.
- Rowan's absence is intriguing because it's generally regarded as being superior to the average New Jersey colleges. A web archive search reveals that Rowan was at least included in the Princeton Review's Best Northeastern list in 2015, but it's since been removed. This seems odd, especially considering that Rowan currently ranks above Rider and Monmouth in the US News' ranking. But on the other hand, the US News ranking hasn't been updated yet and Rowan did go significantly down in the Forbes ranking this year, falling 17 spots and placing behind Montclair, which it was previously above. So it's possible that Rowan's academic standing is dropping - its standing in this year's US News ranking could either confirm or debunk this.
- Rider's inclusion is also intriguing because it ranks lower than Montclair and Rowan in the new Forbes list. In the current US News ranking, it ranks below Rowan. Again though, an accurate comparison between this list and the US News list can't be made until the US News list is updated.
- Like Forbes, the Princeton Review appears to have a disregard for Rutgers Newark and Rutgers Camden, possibly lumping them together with the main campus. Both appear on the current US News ranking, with Rutgers Newark tied with NJIT in the National Universities List and Rutgers Camden tied with Monmouth in the Regional Universities North list.
- As it presently stands, the only difference between the Princeton Review list and the US News' National Universities ranking is the exclusion of Rutgers Newark; all of the schools deemed "national universities" in New Jersey appear in the Princeton Review list. There are no differences between the two in regards to the US News' Liberal Arts Colleges ranking because the only other New Jersey school included in that category besides Drew is Bloomfield and Bloomfield doesn't have a published ranking. The bulk of the differences appear where most of the New Jersey schools appear in the US News ranking, the Regional Universities North list. Like I said before, Rowan currently ranks above Rider and Monmouth, as well as Ramapo and Stockton, despite its exclusion from both the best overall and the best Northeastern lists. Ramapo and Montclair also rank above Monmouth, Montclair ranks above the "best Northeastern" school of Stockton, and again, Rutgers Camden is tied with Monmouth. When US News updates their rankings next month, we'll get the final insight on how, or even if these schools' rankings changed. Personally, I'm not expecting any big changes in the US News list. I expect there to be differences and inconsistencies because Forbes, Princeton Review, and US News all appear to use different methodologies to determine their rankings.