"SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Wofford College is featured among the country’s best institutions for undergraduate education in The Princeton Review’s 2016 edition of its annual college guide, “The Best 380 Colleges,” released this week.

Only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges and only four colleges outside the U.S. are profiled in the book, the education services company’s flagship college guide. It includes detailed profiles of colleges with rating scores for all schools in eight categories. The institutions are not ranked.

“Wofford’s outstanding academics are the chief reason we chose it for this book and we strongly recommend it to applicants,” says Robert Franek, Princeton Review’s senior VP-Publisher and author of “The Best 380 Colleges.” “We make our selections primarily based on data we collect through our annual surveys of administrators at several hundred four-year colleges. Additionally, we give considerable weight to observations from our school visits, opinions of our staff and our 23-member National College Counselor Advisory Board, and an unparalleled amount of feedback we get from our surveys of students attending these schools. We also keep a wide representation of colleges in the book by region, size, selectivity and character.”

The Princeton Review’s two-page profile of Wofford notes that students surveyed said the college is known as “a great and successful academic school,” a “community of learning where individuality, curiosity and success are fostered every day” in large part thanks to a staff of educators that “challenges students to think and discuss their ideas in every class.” The survey also quoted students as saying Wofford has an “excellent reputation with graduate programs” and its “challenging” classes have established it as “a liberal arts college that provides an excellent education and opportunities to expand your horizons.”

Wofford’s “extremely knowledgeable, engaging, and helpful” professors are “willing to assist in any way they can,” going “over and beyond to help you achieve even the hardest goal,” the guide says. The college is a campus “where all of the students look out for each other and help one another succeed.”

In addition, the guide says Wofford offers “a unique culture: diverse in background, ethnicity, and views, but united by the communal notion that at our essence, we are all Wofford.”

“Wofford College distinguishes itself by providing its students with an extremely supportive environment,” the guide continues. “This concern extends to the applications it receives, each of which is given careful consideration. Students who have earned decent grades in challenging courses should find themselves with an opportunity to attend a school that is gaining a reputation as one of the South’s premier liberal arts colleges.”

In the “Survey Says” sidebar in the book’s profile on Wofford, the guide lists topics that Wofford students surveyed were in most agreement about. This list includes:
• Classroom facilities are great
• Lab facilities are great
• Career Services are great
• School is well run
• Easy to get around campus

For more on The Princeton Review’s “The Best 380 Colleges,” go to http://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings/best-colleges. "