Rankings ahoy!

The Princeton Review has published their annual list of college rankings. Naturally, since we put so much stock in things like that here at St. John's, I had to check it out.

The Santa Fe campus has earned the number one spot on one list: "Professors get high marks". Good tutors - this is not a surprise, as if a tutor doesn''t want to be at St. John's specifically, they're not. Annapolis is not on the list. Other high-ranking schools I applied to on this list: One (Knox). Also - Albertson College of Idaho? O...kay.

We are number two for - and let me say that this cracks me up that we're not number one - "Class Discussions Encouraged." Eugene Lang beat us out there for number one, Annapolis is number 3. Heh. Other schools I applied to: Three (Eugene Lang, Bennington, Knox).

Apparently, we have the third-best overall academic undergraduate experience in the country. I'd like to point out that Annapolis did not make the list here, either. Other schools I applied to: None. Number of schools my sister attended: One.

"Intercollegiate sports unpopular or non-existent": number 5. Others I applied to: 2. Annapolis is way down at 9 - I think that they have rowing there, or something.

Our professors are, apparently, are the sixth most accessible in the country. Annapolis is, once more, oddly absent. Other schools I applied to: none. Schools my sister attended: one (and they beat us!)

Santa Fe Johnnies also are the sixth-less likely to ever stop studying. No Annapolis, none of the other places I'd applied to. However, we did beat MIT, which makes me feel inexplicably proud. Take that, you Cambridge-dwellers, you with your...modern math! And...majors!

I'm not sure what this says in conjuction with the previous item, but we are the seventh happiest students in the country. Annapolis makes a weak showing at number 17 (cue Nelson Muntz). I'd like to know what on earth gives TCNJ the right to even be on this list, let alone at #6. It's in New Jersey. There is no joy in Jersey.

Again we're in slot seven for "Lots of class/race interaction", to which I say: huh? I guess, percentage-wise, it's not terrible. Perhaps I'm bitter because Annapolis actually was ranked higher than us for once. We're ten inexplicable spaces higher than St. Mary's, where a good friend of mine attends, and, from what she's said, they're far more diverse than us. Anyway, I know nothing.

#11 for "gay students accepted". Annapolis wins again - sigh. I'd just like to point out that none of the military academies made it onto this list - could it be that the military does, in fact, flat-out encourage - nay, enforce - bigotry?

Final one: We are #13 for dodgeball targets. Annapolis is 20, and I say that it's because they have far more students from the east coast, and everyone knows that we are far tougher than, say, Californians. Every other person on this campus is from Texas or California. There's something like six Texans in my dorm this year, and two Hawaiians, which is so statistically improbable that the mind boggles at it. (The Hawaiians, not the Texans.)

We also, according to the Princeton Review folk, are amongst 122 of the best colleges in "the West". w00t.

Further random browsing makes me glad for so many reasons that I don't attend the Colorado School of Mines, not least because I really don't want to learn how to...uh, mine for stuff.