Texas State named 'Best in the West' college for 9th consecutive year

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
August 14, 2013

For the 9th consecutive year, Texas State University has been named one of the best colleges in the West for 2014 according to the Princeton Review.

Texas State is one of 124 public and private institutions for the western United States the Princeton Review recommends in its “Best in the West” section of its website feature, "2014 Best Colleges: Region by Region."'

"We're pleased to recommend these colleges to users of our site as the best schools to earn their undergrad degrees," said Robert Franek, Princeton Review's senior VP/publisher. "We chose these as our 'regional best' colleges mainly for their excellent academic programs. From several hundred schools in each region, we winnowed our list based on institutional data we collected directly from the schools, our visits to schools over the years, and the opinions of our staff, plus college counselors and advisors whose recommendations we invite. We also take into account what students at the schools reported to us. Only schools that permit us to independently survey their students are eligible to be considered for our regional 'best' lists."

The 124 colleges that the Princeton Review chose for its "Best in the West" list are located in fifteen states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. The Princeton Review also designated 226 colleges in the Northeast, 155 in the Midwest, and 138 in the Southeast as best in their locales on the company’s 2014 regional lists. Collectively, the 643 colleges named "regional best" constitute about 25 percent of the nation's 2,500 four-year colleges.

For this project, the Princeton Review asked students attending the schools to rate their own schools on several issues--from the accessibility of their professors to quality of the campus food--and answer questions about themselves, their fellow students, and their campus life. Comments from surveyed students are quoted in the school profiles on the Princeton Review site. The profiles also have a "Survey Says" list that reveals topics about which students surveyed at the school were in highest agreement