Despite a year marked with challenges due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Ithaca College’s strong all-around academic offerings have once again merited its inclusion in the Princeton Review’s annual list of best colleges in the country.
In its latest guide to “The 387 Best Colleges,” the Princeton Review adapted its process due to the pandemic. With most college students attending their colleges remotely, they were unable to survey them about their on-campus experiences.
As a result, while the guide still ranked the top overall schools, rather than ranking the top 20 colleges in 62 different categories, the guide created several “Great Lists,” which highlight colleges with a history of appearing in those rankings over the past 30 years.
In addition to appearing in the main listing, Ithaca earned spots on three Great Lists: Best College Newspaper, Best College Radio Station and Best Theater.
Those inclusions should come as no surprise. The Ithacan is routinely recognized as one of the top student newspapers by national journalism organizations. In October 2020, the paper was awarded a national Newspaper Pacemaker Award, which is widely considered the Pulitzer Prize of college journalism. In 2017, The Ithacan was inducted into the Associated College Press Pacemaker Hall of Fame in recognition of its numerous Pacemaker finalist nominations and wins.
The college’s student-run radio stations, WICB and VIC, also frequently bring home awards at the state and national levels. In 2020, the College Media Association named WICB the Pinnacle Award Winner for Four-Year Radio Station of the Year. Both the newspaper and the radio stations are based in the Roy H. Park School of Communications.
Ithaca’s Department of Theatre Arts, housed in the School of Humanities and Sciences, is nationally renowned, with numerous on-campus productions each year, to go along with other performances in the community. Alumni—and even current students—make frequent appearances on Broadway and in film and television productions.
The college was also included in the list of Best Northeastern schools.
In its profile of the college, the publication highlighted the students’ access to professional labs, studios, equipment, and research opportunities; as well as alumni who take an active role in current student success.
The Princeton Review is an education services company known for its test-prep courses, tutoring, guidebooks and other student resources. The school profiles and ranking lists can be found on the Princeton Review's website.