One of the Country’s Best: Evergreen Scores High in Princeton Guide

(Olympia, Wash.) The Evergreen State College is one of the nation's best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review’s new 2014 edition of its annual college guide, "The Best 378 Colleges." Only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges are profiled in the book, one of the nation’s leading college guides. Evergreen, Washington State University and the University of Washington are the only public baccalaureate institutions in the state to make the list.

"Evergreen offers outstanding academics, which is the primary criteria for our choice of schools for the book,” said Robert Franek, author of the 2014 guide. “We base our selections primarily on data we obtain in our annual institutional data surveys. We also take into account input we get from our staff, our 35-member National College Counselor Advisory Board, our personal visits to schools, and the wide range of feedback we get from our surveys of students attending these schools.”

“Evergreen represents an extraordinary combination of quality and value,” said college president Les Purce. “We’re proud to be recognized for what we can offer to our students and our state.”

Tuition costs for 2014 are estimated to be $12,397 at UW, $11,396 at WSU and $8,521 at Evergreen.

In its profile of Evergreen, The Princeton Review praises the college for its “unique approach” to academics and quotes extensively from Evergreen students surveyed for the book. “Even the science programs involve large portions of discussion and peer collaboration,” said a student, praising the interaction between professors and students. “Students at Evergreen are commonly some of the strongest performers in their high schools,” notes the guide. “The college’s self-directed academic curriculum favors students who can handle the responsibility of creating and developing their own educational path.”

Rankings are based on publicly available data related to academics, admissions selectivity, financial aid and other factors as well as a survey of 126,000 students nationally; an average of 333 per school. See the Princeton Review website for more information.

The Evergreen State College is a nationally acclaimed public liberal arts and sciences college known for its distinctive interdisciplinary, student-centered approach to academics.