Princeton Review Names America's 'Best Value' Colleges in Annual Book:

NEW YORK, April 24 /PRNewswire-USNewsire/ -- According to The Princeton Review, Rice University is the nation's "best value" private college, while New College of Florida is (for the second consecutive year) the "best value" public college. The schools hold #1 spots on the top 10 private / top 10 public "best value" colleges ranking lists in the new 2008 edition of its annual book "America's Best Value Colleges" (Random House / Princeton Review, $18.95), on sale today. The book profiles 165 schools the New York-based education services company recommends as the best undergraduate education deals this year.

Said Robert Franek, Princeton Review VP-Publishing, "Families searching for colleges with excellent academics, generous financial aid packages and / or relatively low costs of attendance will find outstanding choices in this book. We selected the 165 schools for this edition and its two top 10 ranking lists based on data we collected from 650 institutions during the 2005-2006 academic year and our surveys of students attending them. To winnow our list of "best values," we considered more than 30 factors in four areas: academics, tuition, financial aid and student borrowing."

  The book's "Top 10 Best Value Private Colleges" are:

   1. Rice Univ. (Houston, TX)
   2. Williams College (Williamstown, MA)
   3. Grinnell College (Grinnell, IA)
   4. Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, PA)
   5. Thomas Aquinas College (Santa Paula, CA)
   6. Wabash College (Crawfordsville, IN)
   7. Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA)
   8. Amherst College (Amherst, MA)
   9. Scripps College (Claremont, CA)
   10. Harvard College (Cambridge, MA).

  The book's "Top 10 Best Value Public Colleges" are:

   1. New College of Florida (Sarasota, FL)
   2. Truman State Univ. (Kirksville, MO)
   3. Univ. of North Carolina (Asheville, NC)
   4. Univ. of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA)
   5. Univ. of California - Berkeley
   6. Univ. of California - San Diego
   7. Univ. of California - Santa Cruz
   8. Univ. of Minnesota - Morris
   9. Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison
   10. St. Mary's College of Maryland (St. Mary's City, MD)

The Princeton Review doesn't rank the schools in the book overall, 1 to 165.

The company today posted a list of the schools in the book by state on its site http://www.princetonreview.com/ at which users can search Princeton Review's other college rankings. The company surveys 115,000 students whose ratings of their colleges determine the "Top 20" rankings in 60 categories in Princeton Review's "Best 361 Colleges" book published each August. Its survey of college applicants and parents of applicants reports their "Top 10 Dream Colleges" each March.

The Princeton Review is known for its test-prep courses, college and graduate school admission services, books, and education programs. It is not affiliated with Princeton University or ETS.