Knox College has once again been named as one of the nation’s top colleges in the newly released 2021 edition of The Princeton Review’s annual guidebook, The Best 386 Colleges.

Though schools featured in the guidebook are listed in alphabetical order and are not individually ranked, inclusion in The Best 386 Colleges does place Knox among the top 14 percent of U.S. four-year colleges, which were selected mainly for the quality of their undergraduate academics. 

"Since 1992, our goal in publishing college rankings—and our ongoing mission at The Princeton Review—is to help students find, get accepted to, and thrive at the colleges best for them," said Editor-in-Chief Robert Franek, the book’s author. "We recommend every one of the 386 colleges in the new edition of our book as a ‘best’ choice, and we salute them for their exceptional offerings, especially during this extremely challenging academic year."

The Princeton Review chooses which colleges to include in the book by reviewing data collected from college administrators about the academic offerings at their institutions. The Princeton Review also considers data gathered from its surveys of college students about various aspects of their campus and community experiences.   

Here are some excerpts from The Princeton Review's survey of Knox students:

• Knox has a strong academic reputation and is dedicated to providing a “well-rounded liberal arts program” that encourages students to take classes outside of their majors and combine their different academic interests into one interdisciplinary interest. The College gives students “the appropriate space to grow on their own.”
• Many students believe that Knox's academic calendar system, in which students generally take three courses during each of three terms, “promotes better study habits and more attention focused on each class.” Classes are described as “tough and [requiring] a lot of time studying, reading, writing, and thinking.”
• The faculty and administration are spoken of highly, and students say they find themselves to be “academically challenged without fierce competition.”
• The student body is creative, intellectual, and diverse. “Students fit in by being themselves, no matter who they are.”