Jul 30, 2008 - Claremont, Calif. - Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is one of the nation’s best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review.  

The New York-based education services company features the college in the 2009 edition of its annual guidebook, “The Best 368 Colleges.”

Only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and two Canadian colleges appear in the book, which offers two-page profiles of each school and student survey-based ranking lists of top 20 colleges in more than 60 categories.

“We chose schools for this book primarily for their outstanding academics,” said Robert Franek, vice president of publishing at The Princeton Review. “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. We also consider the opinions of independent college counselors, students and parents we hear from yearlong. Finally, we work to have a wide representation of colleges in the book by region, size, selectivity and character.”

In two of the academic categories, “Professors Get High Marks” and “Most Accessible Professors,” HMC was ranked eighth and 15th, respectively. The college was also ranked fifth in the “Students Study the Most” category.

The guidebook’s ranking lists are based on The Princeton Review’s survey of 120,000 students (about 325 per campus on average) attending the featured 368 colleges.

According to an anonymous comment provided by an engineering major, “Mudd is extremely good at offering research opportunities for undergraduates.” Another student reported that the college is a school where undergrads are “given all the freedom and resources to explore all the brilliant, not so brilliant, and downright foolish ideas we conceive.” And yet another summed it up like this: “[HMC is] pretty much as good as it gets. As long as you are serious about learning math and science, you will be happy here.”

The guidebook is available now at bookstores across the country or at The Princeton Review website.