A view of the Chicago Skyline from the green rooftop at McGowan South on DePaul University’s Lincoln Park Campus. The Princeton Review writes in their “Best 385 Colleges” guide for 2020 that DePaul students surveyed say they “love Chicago.” (DePaul University/Carol Hughes)DePaul is one of the nation's best institutions for undergraduates to earn their college degree, according to The Princeton Review. The education services company profiles and recommends DePaul in the 2020 edition of its annual college guide, “The Best 385 Colleges.”
Only about 13% of America’s 3,000 four-year colleges are profiled in the book. The company chooses the colleges for the book based on data it annually collects from administrators at hundreds of colleges about their institutions’ academic offerings. The Princeton Review also considers data it gathers from its surveys of college students who rate and report on various aspects of their campus and community experiences for this project.
The Princeton Review does not rank schools overall, but provides college rating scores for several different categories, for example Quality of Life Rating (DePaul: 90). The company also publishes a series of specialty rankings, and in this year’s 2020 Edition, DePaul was included in the following specialty rankings and lists:
- Best Midwestern
- Green Colleges
- Top 25 Undergraduate Entrepreneurial Programs (ranked #13)
- Top 50 Undergraduate Game Design Program (ranked #34)
In the profile on DePaul, under the section “Students Say,” The Princeton Review includes the following information, noting that comments in quotations are from DePaul students surveyed for the book:
- “DePaul University’s urban setting means this Chicago school is ‘all about integrating the opportunities of the city into the classroom,’ offering students ‘the essentials in order for a student to succeed in the business field.’”
- “Internships and career-placement opportunities both during school and after graduation result in, according to some graduates, students who are ‘some of the hardest working and driven college students around.’”
- “The school’s location in downtown Chicago, one of the largest and most vibrant cities in the United States, means that ‘there is a plethora of choices of things to do’ and plenty of transportation to get to them. … The bottom line is, life at DePaul is all about location, location, location, so ‘the internships, classes, and social life are centered around the city.’”
- “There is no nailing down the typical DePaul student. ‘It’s like a melting pot of experience and people from all over the world that come to be a part of the DePaul environment,’ a ‘unique blend of all kinds of students’ who are ‘like a giant mixed bag of Jelly Bellys … every student is so different you have a little bit of everything.’”