Newswise — Mount Holyoke College is one of the country's best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review Guide's 2010 edition of its annual guidebook, "The Best 371 Colleges" (Random House), published July 28.

Mount Holyoke was once again rated highly in the categories of best classroom experience (#6), best college library (#12), most race and class interaction (#9), acceptance of the gay community (#10), most beautiful campus (#3), and "dorms like palaces" (#13).

The individual college profiles featured in "The Best 371 Colleges" also include school ratings, with numerical scores on a scale of 60 to 99, based largely on school-reported data collected during the 2008-2009 academic year. Mount Holyoke earned ratings of 98 each in academics, selectivity, and financial aid, and a 90 for the quality of campus life.

In its profile on Mount Holyoke, The Princeton Review Guide quotes extensively from MHC students surveyed for the book. Those students spoke frequently about the College's "great lab facilities," the safe feel of the campus, "dorms like palaces," and the popularity of political activism and musical organizations.

Mount Holyoke, a premier research liberal arts college for women located in South Hadley, MA, is renowned for its academic rigor and internationalism. With students from throughout the United States and nearly 70 countries, it is a multicultural community. One in every three MHC students is an international citizen or African American, Asian American, Latina, Native American, or multiracial. Mount Holyoke's faculty and staff speak more than 50 languages.

The Princeton Review Guide's 62 ranking lists in "The Best 371 Colleges" are entirely based on its survey of 122,000 students (about 325 per campus on average) attending the colleges in the book. The 80-question survey asks students to rate their schools in several areas and report on their campus experiences. Topics range from student assessments of their professors, administrators, financial aid, and campus food, to race/class relations, gay community acceptance, and other aspects of campus life.

For more information, see:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/

http://www.princetonreview.com/