Just a year ago, Penn State was given the meaningless distinction of #1 Party School by the Princeton Review. After a tumultuous year, where we saw the tragic death of Joe Dado, the 'This America Life' podcast and the endless controversy over meaningless faux drinking holidays, Penn State has been dropped to #3 and the University of Georgia has been given the #1 spot.
Despite being hailed as the number one party school in the country by the Princeton Review last year (our article), Penn State didn't even crack the top 10 on Playboy's 2009 Top Party Schools. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
The two rankings have significant differences in their methodology for crowning the party king. The Princeton Review's rankings are based on a survey of 122,000 college students across the country which, while very democratic approach, has lead to the criticism that the rankings are nothing more than a popularity contest.
Playboy's system is quite less ambiguous and more scientific (Playboy being more calculated than the Princeton Review?). However, their system may be a little biased towards certain schools. They use 5 categories: Bikini, Sex, Campus, Sports, and Brains. Each one of these categories had careful equations applied to them. Read on for the full methodology and list.
Apparently we’ve got some high achievers in our town. The Daily Beast just ranked State College the eighth smartest college town in America. How so? The criteria included bachelor’s degrees per capita, graduate degrees per capita, students’ median SAT scores, and voter turnout in the 2008. While you can’t truly measure the “intelligence” of a […]
A new study came out last week ranking the Smeal College of Business’ Supply Chain Management department as first nationally among universities that offer the program. The study surveyed 126 companies in an industry survey and asked 19 universities for data regarding their programs. The study then broke down the responses into three catagories: Industry […]
Last week, U.S. News & World Report released its 2009 batch of college rankings. Penn State was ranked as the #15 best public university and #47 best university of any type. We didn’t make the top #50 values category. The Big Ten schools that beat us in the public school rankings are: 4. University of […]
No thanks to the pesky rioting, State College was named the second safest city in the country behind Logan, Utah by CQ Press recently. The full Metropolitan Crime Rankings can be found here. The Collegian reports: State College Mayor Bill Welch said this ranking reflects positively on the borough, something that is not always the […]