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Queens College gets high marks on Princeton list

Queens College gets high marks on Princeton list
By Anna Gustafson

The Princeton Review heaped accolades on Queens College in its annual schools guide that was released this week, citing its affordability and diversity.

“We commend Queens College for its outstanding academics, which is the primary criteria for our selection of schools for the book,” said Robert Franek, the author of the guide and Princeton Review’s senior vice president. “Our choices are based on institutional data we collect about schools, our visits to schools over the years, feedback we gather from students attending the schools and the opinions of our staff.”

The Princeton Review’s Best 373 Colleges publication includes about 15 percent of the country’s 2,500 four-year colleges, as well as two Canadian schools. The book names Queens College as one of the best northeastern schools and notes students are pleased with the price — $4,600 a year for in-state undergraduates — and appreciate that there are a large number of pupils from across the globe on campus.

The school is widely known as being the crown jewel in the City University of New York system.

“If you can name a language, it’s spoken here,” the guide quotes one student as saying. “If you name a country, someone has ethnic ties to it. There are students of all races, sexual orientations, ethnicities and genders at Queens College who live together in harmony.”

The guide quoted a speech pathology major as saying that “every time I walk through campus, I feel as if I am trekking through the seven continents.”

James Muyskens, the college’s president, said school officials were elated with the results.

“We put great emphasis on student satisfaction at Queens College,” Muyskens said. “Providing a high-quality education in a welcome atmosphere that encourages personal growth and professional success is paramount to our mission. That’s why it is very gratifying to know that our students have such positive things to say about their experience with us.”

The guide ranked Queens College as No. 3 in its “Got Milk?” category, which lists campuses where beer is scarce. The school was No. 7 in the “Scotch and Soda, Hold the Scotch,” category, which ranks how prevalent hard liquor is on campus, and 17th for the category “Stone-Cold Sober Schools,” a category “based on a combination of survey questions concerning the use of alcohol and drugs, hours of study each day and the popularity of the Greek system.”

Reach reporter Anna Gustafson by e-mail at agustafson@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.