IvyWise and Dr. Cohen asked to name some of the hottest colleges in America.



The 50 Best Colleges

© 2006 CosmoGIRL!

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METHODOLOGY FOR CHOOSING SCHOOLS IN "THE 50 BEST COLLEGES FOR COSMOGIRL!'S": The final list of the top 50 coed colleges for CosmoGIRL!s is based on The Princeton Review data, CosmoGIRL! survey responses, and the perspectives of college experts. Experts included: Steven Antonoff, Ph.D., educational consultant at Antonoff Associates in Denver; Sam Blair, independent college consultant and former college counselor and Guidance Dept chair at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, AR; Katherine Cohen, Ph.D., founder and CEO of IvyWise in New York City; Christy Dillon, head of Upper School at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, CA; Lindy Kahn, Houston-based education consultant and founder of Lindy Kahn Associates (www.educationalconsulting.com); Loren Pope, author of Colleges That Change Lives (Penguin Putnam, 2000) and former education editor at The New York Times; Jessie Klein, M.Ed., MSW, Ph.D, sociology and criminology assistant professor at Adelphi University; Judi Robinovitz, certified educational planner and owner of three accredited Score at the Top Learning Centers in Palm Beach County, FL (www.scoreatthetop.com); Laura Davidson Ross, director of college counseling at St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin, TX; Carla Shere, Ed.D, independent consultant on college issues and director of college counseling at The Heritage School in New York City; Imy Wax, co-author of K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Disabilities or Attention Deficit Disorder, educational consultant, founder of Imy F. Wax Associates, and psychotherapist in private practice in Chicago.

The Princeton Review helped CosmoGIRL! select the highest-scoring schools from more than 600 U.S. colleges and universities, based on 33 of its data points selected by CosmoGIRL! Eleven of those points were from answers The Princeton Review culled directly from 78,000 female college students about their opinions of the quality of the following: campus safety; recreational/athletic facilities; average class size; average lab size; student friendliness; degree of social and ethnic diversity on campus; city or town suitability; individual student happiness; the quality of professor instruction; career/job placement services and internship popularity. Another 22 points, acquired directly from the schools themselves, were based on the following: availability of regional alumni services at career center; women's center services; health services; computer network access in dorm rooms; remote access to e-mail; above-average number of women's varsity sports teams; above-average number of women's club sports teams; internships as special study options; honors programs; alumni network, alumni services, and career/job searches; career assessment; and, in addition to the above, high school diploma requirement for admission; percentage (of those students determined to have financial need) who received some financial aid is met at greater than 80 percent; percentage of students with financial need whose financial need is fully met is greater than 85 percent; women exceeding 50 percent of faculty; student-to-faculty ratio less than 12:1; small average class size; no network or lab fee is required for computer usage on campus; the school sponsors programs specifically designed to help entrepreneurial students launch businesses; the school offers experiential learning opportunities with entrepreneurs for students.

Finally, we asked schools to add anything else they thought would help further describe the female experience at their school. For the vast majority of data, the schools got one point if they satisfied a criterion and none if they did not. Answers to the students' responses were weighted five times as heavily as those reported by schools themselves.

We then looked at how schools that were listed in 2005's CosmoGIRL! College Guide did in this year's Princeton Review data. We then showed our list of colleges and universities to high school guidance counselors and college experts (see list of experts above), who advised CosmoGIRL! editors about schools that should be eliminated and those that should be added, based on their own campus visits and feedback. We also asked each of these schools to complete a three-part CosmoGIRL! College Survey. This subjective process resulted in our list of 50 colleges for CosmoGIRL!S.

NOTE: There is an allowance for some variation among statistics because each school has its own method for determining costs and tuition, curriculum, class size, etc. Our statistics for tuition, student to faculty ratio, and number of undergraduates are from the 2005-2006 academic year. Contact the school for the most up-to-date information. As a rule, CosmoGIRL! based tuition costs on tuition without housing and other fees (room and board), except for those schools that have been marked by an asterisk. These schools' tuition does include housing and other fees. Some schools, including Canadian schools, included mandatory fees along with tuition, others separated out only tuition costs. All SAT and ACT scoring information was obtained from The Princeton Review.

METHODOLOGY OF CANADIAN COLLEGES
To compile the list of Canadian colleges, we used the same The Princeton Review data as we did for the U.S. colleges with two exceptions. The Princeton Review does not regularly collect student surveys from Canadian schools (except for McGill University and the University of Toronto) and theU.S. financial aid category is not included because Canadian citizens do not qualify for U.S. financial aid. We selected our Canadian colleges based on The Princeton Review's data and further selected based on geographical and institutional diversity. The Canadian tuition fees are based on liberal arts courses (except in the case of the University of Manitoba, where it is based on the cost of their first year Common Program, a mix of Arts and Sciences), as other courses (such as science or engineering) might cost more. The Canadian schools' tuition fees for international students are reported in American dollars, based on the currency conversion rates at press time. Some schools included mandatory tuition figures in fees, while others did not. Please contact a school's admissions department for complete tuition and other fees associated with attending that school.