<p>In its 2008 The Best 361 Colleges, The Princeton Review awarded Holy Cross a 98/100 academic rating - the highest of any Catholic institution of higher education, including Georgetown University, University of Notre Dame, and Boston College.</p>
<p>An impressive statistic</p>
<p>I think Holy Cross is great, too, but you can take those Princeton "grades" with a grain of salt. In addition, since the previous two editions had HC's academic rating as an 89 and they tend not to change, it's unfortunately, probably just a typo. Harvard and Yale only get 96 and 97s in the past editions, but I don't have 2008.</p>
<p>You may be right on the typo but I would hope they are more careful than that. I think the reason Holy Cross is rated high is HC is much smaller than many of its peers which results in much smaller class sizes (10-19 versus 20-29) and because it is strictly undergraduate so undergraduate students get all of the attention of the professors and there are no graduate students doing any teaching at any time.</p>
<p>MarathonMan: Coincidentally I am running my 8th marathon tomorrow morning. An obscure one called the Northern Central Trail marathon with only about 600 runners or so in Sparks, MD.</p>
<p>Good luck!! Trail marathons can be a whole different animal if the trail is a rough one. Hope you have a great race!</p>
<p>In addition, Caltech gets a 78 as an Academic Rating this year. This rating clearly isn't very trustworthy.</p>
<p>Rating is based in part on Student Surveys so looks like there were some unhappy campers at Caltech that dragged the average down for some reason.</p>
<p>I had heard from others that the academics at Holy Cross were extremely challenging.</p>
<p>I'm not surprised at all by the 98 academic rating. HC is supposed to be a TON of work, and a stressful environment. I know kids who have picked BC over HC because it is less work and more focused on football.</p>
<p>MarathonMan88: You state "the previous two editions had HC's academic rating as an 89". This is in correct. In its 2007 The Best 361 Colleges, The Princeton Review awarded Holy Cross a 95/100 academic rating. The 2008 raised it to 98. So clearly no typo as you inferred.</p>
<p>2009 edition of Princeton Review again has HC's academic rating at 98. As a basis of comparison, BC's is 88: Test</a> Prep: GMAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, SAT, ACT, and More | The Princeton Review</p>