Published: August 06, 2008 10:49 pm         

MSU makes The Princeton Review

Mountain State University is one of the best colleges and universities in the Southeast according to The Princeton Review.

The New York City-based education services company selected the school as one of 139 institutions it recommends in its “Best in the Southeast” section on its Web site feature “2009 Best Colleges: Region by Region”

“It is an honor for us once again to be recognized by The Princeton Review for our hard work. It is extremely important for us to know how we measure up on the national scale in higher education,” said Dr. Charles Polk, president and CEO of Mountain State University.

This is the third year that Mountain State has been recognized by the publication.

“We commend all of the schools we name this year as our ‘regional best’ colleges primarily for their excellent academic programs,” said Robert Franek, Princeton Review’s vice president of Publishing. “We selected them based on institutional data we collected from several hundred schools in each region, our visits to schools over the years, and the opinions of independent and high school-based college advisors whose recommendations we invite. We also take into account what each school’s customers — their students — report to us about their campus experiences at their schools on our 80-question student survey. Finally, we work to have our annual roster of ‘regional best’ colleges present a range of institutions in each region that varies by size, selectivity, character and locale.”

The 139 colleges The Princeton Review chose for its “Best in the Southeast” designations are located in 12 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, according to Franek.

The Princeton Review also designated 212 colleges in the Northeast, 120 in the West, and 159 in the Midwest as best in their locales. The 630 colleges named “regional best(s)” represent only about 25 percent of the nation’s 2,500 four-year colleges.

In other MSU news:

n Mountain State University will host the Fourth Minority Health Disparities in Rural Appalachia Conference today and Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily on the Beckley campus.

The event will take place in Carter Hall and the John W. Eye Convocation Center.

The conference will provide information on awareness, prevention and treatment of chronic diseases that affect rural and under-served communities in southern West Virginia and across the state.

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