Rhodes College is profiled in the 30th anniversary and 2022 edition of the college guide—The Best 387 Colleges— published by education services company The Princeton Review. New to the guide are the “Great Lists” identifying schools that have had an impressive history of appearances on its ranking lists. Rhodes earned a spot in the “Most Beautiful Campus” category.
“The vibrant Rhodes experience offers transformative opportunities to gain professional and leadership experience through internships and community engagement, all while learning alongside world-class faculty,” says Vice President for Student Life Meghan Harte Weyant. “It is no surprise that Rhodes’ beautiful campus and top-tier education is highly ranked year after year.”
The Princeton Review also produces ranking lists of the 200 best value colleges each year based on categories including academics, affordability, financial aid, and graduation rates. For 2021, Rhodes is among the Top 20 Best Private Schools for Internships and Top 50 Best Value Colleges (Private), based on stellar academics, affordable cost, and strong career prospects for graduates.
“We salute Rhodes College for its outstanding academics, and we are genuinely pleased to recommend it to prospective applicants searching for their ‘best-fit’ college,” says Rob Franek, editor-in-chief and lead author of The Best 387 Colleges.
Rhodes College graduates students with The Rhodes Edge, which is an educational and residential experience that ensures that graduates are intellectually ready to tackle the world’s most pressing problems; leadership ready to create equitable and prosperous communities; and career and graduate school ready to succeed in tomorrow’s economy.
Rhodes is committed to making its world-class education affordable with 86 percent of first-year students receiving merit-based aid and 57 percent receiving need-based aid. Financial assistance is offered in the forms of fellowships, scholarships, grants, loans, and work-study. About 80 percent of students complete at least one internship. Rhodes is one of a very few prominent, nationally ranked liberal arts colleges located in a major metropolitan area, and it has strong partnerships with local organizations ranging from world-class hospitals to legal aid nonprofits to Fortune 500 companies.
For the college guide, The Princeton Review collected data from administrators about their institutions’ academic offerings and considered data gathered from its surveys of college students at the colleges who rate and report on various aspects of their campus and community experiences.
Comments from The Princeton Review and Rhodes students the company surveyed include:
- Rhodes also allows students to access their strong alumni network, which provides an “immense array of career opportunities,” and there’s also a “well-developed study abroad program.”
- Perhaps the highest praise is reserved for Rhodes’ faculty and staff, whom many say are the school’s “greatest strength.” Students love that their professors “each retain their unique styles, with accessibility being the only common factor.”
- “Professors have challenged me, and through it all, I have learned more than I ever thought possible.”
- The “great community feel” at Rhodes comes down to the unifying desire to learn.
“The Rhodes College experience is marked by a number of distinctive features that promote student development, academically and personally – a campus of inspiring beauty at the center of an ascendant, culturally rich city; an intimate, robust community defined by a sense of greater purpose, and a culture of faculty-student engagement that includes a rich array of practicums in which classroom learning is applied and refined in real-world settings. In joining the realms of thought and action, Rhodes students become uniquely well prepared for success and fulfillment as they graduate, and throughout their lives,” says Interim President Carroll D. Stevens.