St. Mary’s College of Maryland is one of the country's best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review.  The education services company features the school in its new 2010 edition of its popular guidebook, "The Best 371 Colleges.”
 
Only 15% of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges are good enough to be profiled in the book, which is The Princeton Review's flagship annual college guide.  It includes detailed profiles of the selected colleges with school rating scores in eight categories, plus ranking lists of the top 20 schools in 62 categories based on  surveys of 122,000 students attending the colleges.
 
Robert Franek, Princeton Review's vice president and author of “The Best 371 Colleges" said, "We commend St. Mary’s College of Maryland for its outstanding academics, which is the primary criteria for our choice of schools for the book.”
 
The college also placed high on three lists in the book.  The college placed fifth for “Lots of Race/Class Interaction,” meaning students from different ethnic and economic backgrounds frequently mingle.  Also on that list were Stanford University and the University of Miami.  SMCM ranked ninth for “Happiest Students,” with Yale University coming in at sixth, and Brown University coming in first.  The college also ranked 12th for the “Most Beautiful Campus” with Princeton University in seventh place. 
 
In its profile on SMCM, The Princeton Review says, “Set on the beautiful St. Mary’s River, St. Mary’s College of Maryland…has all of the intellectual stimulation of a private liberal arts school with none of the academic rivalry.”
 
The 80-question survey for the Review’s ranking lists asks students to rate their schools on topics ranging from student assessments of their professors, administrators, financial aid, and campus food. Other rankings are based on student reports about their student body's political leanings, race/class relations, gay community acceptance, and other aspects of campus life. 
 
SMCM students most agreed on the college having great athletic facilities, friendly students, great food on campus, a sense of happiness and safety, and a diverse group of students who commonly interact. 
 
You can read all the school profiles and ranking lists in "The Best 371 Colleges" at www.PrincetonReview.com, where users can read frequently asked questions about the book, the survey, and the criteria for each of the ratings and rankings.