Our Methodology For The Top 20 College Campuses

We recently released a list of the top college campuses 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 campus' architecture, facilities, and services in a positive light.

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 — Claremont McKenna College — recieved 61 overall points. Our lowest ranked schools in the top 20 — Kansas State University, Pomona College, and Stanford University — each recieved 33 points. We broke any ties in our list by giving the advantage to the school with the higher Best Quality of Life ranking. If both schools were not on that list, we rewarded the higher ranking in a different common category.

Here are the rankings we compiled for our list:

• Best College Library

• Great Financial Aid

• Best Career Services

• Best Health Services

• Best Campus Food

• Best College Dorms

• Most Beautiful Campus

• Easiest Campus to Get Around

• Best Quality of Life

• Town-Gown Relations are Great

• College City Gets High Marks