The City College of New York is one of the nation's best institutions for undergraduates according to The Princeton Review. The education services company profiles and recommends CCNY in the new edition of its annual college guide, The Best 390 Colleges: 2025 Edition, (August 27, 2024, Penguin Random House, $26.99).
Only about 15% of America’s 2,600 four-year colleges are profiled in the book. The Princeton Review chose the colleges for the book based on data it annually collects from surveys of 2,000 college administrators about their institutions’ academic offerings. The company also reviews data from its surveys of college students attending the schools who report on their experiences at their institutions.
"We salute The City College of New York for its outstanding academics, and many other impressive offerings. We recommend it as an ideal choice for students searching for their ‘best-fit’ college,” said Rob Franek, The Princeton Review's Editor-in-Chief and lead author of The Best 390 Colleges.
Princeton Review editors praise the school for its “quality and challenging education,” and quote CCNY students surveyed by the company. The students hailed CCNY’s "broad curriculum,” with special mention for its “rigorous sciences” and an engineering school that is “one of the best public schools."
The Princeton Review does not rank the colleges in the book hierarchically, from 1 to 390. However, the book has 50 categories of ranking lists. Each list names the top 25 schools (of those in the book) in its category. The ranking lists are entirely based on The Princeton Review’s surveys of 168,000 students at the 390 schools in the book. The 89-question survey asked students to rate their colleges on dozens of topics and report on their campus experiences at them. Information on the student survey process and methodology for the ranking lists is on The Princeton Review’s website here.
CCNY appears at #18 in Princeton’s Top 20 Best Schools for Making an Impact (Public Schools).
The school profiles and ranking lists in The Best 390 Colleges are posted here where they can be searched for free.
The Best 390 Colleges is one of more than 150 Princeton Review books in a line published by Penguin Random House. The annual book and its rankings have been featured on NBC TODAY more than two dozen times and referenced by many other media from NPR to The Wall Street Journal and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Princeton Review (www.PrincetonReview.com) is an education services company known for its tutoring, test-prep, admission services, books, and other learning resources. Headquartered in New York, NY, it is not affiliated with Princeton University.
About The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review is a leading tutoring, test prep, and college admissions services company. Every year, it helps millions of college- and graduate school–bound students as well as working professionals achieve their education and career goals through its many education services and products. These include online and in-person courses delivered by a network of more than 4,000 teachers and tutors; online resources; more than 150 print and digital books published by Penguin Random House; and dozens of categories of school rankings. Founded in 1981, The Princeton Review is now in its 43rd year. The company’s Tutor.com brand, now in its 24th year, is one of the largest online tutoring services in the U.S. It comprises a community of thousands of tutors who have delivered more than 27 million tutoring sessions. The Princeton Review is headquartered in New York, NY. The Princeton Review is not affiliated with Princeton University. For more information, visit PrincetonReview.com and the company's Media Center. Follow the company on X (formerly Twitter) (@ThePrincetonRev) and Instagram (@theprincetonreview).
In further recognition of its social and economic impact, CCNY also appears on the latest Forbes’ America’s Top Colleges list in The 25 Colleges With The Highest Payoff category.
To determine which of Forbes’ top 500 colleges offer the best return on investment (ROI), the publication looked at each school’s price-to-earnings premium, a calculation by the think tank Third Way that shows the number of years it takes graduates to recoup the net cost of their education. It also factored in the schools’ debt-to-percent-borrowed index, a figure that Forbes created for the top 500 colleges list that takes into account how many students take on debt to attend the school, and how much debt those graduates leave with.
Combined, these measures yielded 25 schools that offer a low-debt education and promise high earnings potential. In other words, a high average ROI. Third Way determined that at CCNY, New York state residents, whose undergraduate tuition is just $6,930 a year, could recoup their net cost in just six months after graduation.
In addition to CCNY, the other schools with a high average ROI include:
- Princeton University;
- Stanford University;
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
- Harvard University and;
- Yale University.
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Lightcast puts at $3.2 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Jay Mwamba
p: 917.892.0374
e:
jmwamba@ccny.cuny.edu