Our Methodology For The 20 Most Fun Colleges

We recently released a list of the most fun colleges based on a compilation of several rankings from The Princeton Review's 2014 Best Colleges book.

In order to determine the lists that were included in our ranking, we looked for categories that would show a strong social life, high student investment in athletics, and lots of alcohol.

Once we identified these Princeton Review categories, we inverted the lists in order to award a larger amount of points to the schools ranked higher. For example, 20 points went to the #1 school on a list, 19 points to the #2, 18 to the #3, and so on through #20, which received a single point.

We then added up all the points we designated to each school to determine an overall ranking. Although no school appeared in all the lists we surveyed, every college in our top 20 was featured in two or more Princeton Review rankings.

Our highest ranked school — Penn State University — recieved 92 overall points. Our lowest ranked schools in the top 20 — Notre Dame and University of Missouri — each recieved 31 points. We broke any ties in our list by giving the advantage to the school with the higher ranking in a common category. In some cases, we used editorial discretion to award a school a higher position on our list based on which categories they were included in.

Here are the rankings we compiled for our list:

• Their Students Love These Colleges
• Students Study the Least
• Everyone Plays Intramural Sports
• Best Athletic Facilities
• Party Schools
• Jock Schools
• Lots of Hard Liquor
• Lots of Beer
• Lots of Greek Life
• College City Gets High Marks