Anseley Philippe
A rooftop view of Vanderbilt’s campus, as photographed on Nov. 11, 2022. (Hustler Multimedia/Anseley Philippe)
Vanderbilt ranked highly in multiple categories on The Princeton Review’s Best Colleges 2024 rankings, including ranking No. 1 in quality of life. However, the university’s ranking fell significantly in a few other categories, including great financial aid and happiest students.
Through an online survey, The Princeton Review gathered the opinions of 165,000 students from the 389 schools across the U.S. to determine its rankings. The questions focused primarily on four categories: academics/administration, college life, peers and themselves. To ensure that a college does not receive an extremely misrepresented ranking, each school is sent an early copy, prior to publication, of the college’s profile, to which they are able to report objections and corrections.
In an email to The Hustler, a university representative said the university considers the rankings’ methodology when determining if they accurately portray the student experience.
“Princeton Review’s methodology is based on small sample surveys of a few hundred students at each school with no consideration of other data points,” the representative said. “We believe Princeton Review confirms that Vanderbilt delivers a great experience to students, but we don’t worry too much about year-on-year rises and drops.”
Top rankings
Beyond Vanderbilt ranking No. 1 in quality of life, it also ranked No. 13 in most beautiful campus and No. 15 in best college newspapers. Despite only being on campus for a few weeks now, first-year Emily Cha said she agreed with the university’s No. 1 quality of life ranking.
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