ECU named a best college in U.S. and South and environmentally responsible
- ECU has been named one of the country’s Best 392 Colleges for 2027 by The Princeton Review.
- ECU also recognized as Best South and Green College.
East Carolina University has been named one of the nation’s Best 392 Colleges and best in the South for 2027 by The Princeton Review.
Students walk toward the cupola on ECU’s campus. (Photo by Rhett Butler)
ECU was named among the Best South academically outstanding institutions in a region that includes Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
ECU remains one of 388 institutions recognized as a Green College. Each Green College is rated as environmentally responsible, providing a healthy and sustainable quality of life for students, and preparing students for employment in the clean-energy economy of the 21st century.
The Princeton Review, an educational services company known for tutoring, test prep courses and other student resources, does not rank schools from 1 to 392 in its best colleges.
In other categories, it ranks schools in 50 areas ranging from academics and extracurriculars to student support services and campus life. The ranked lists are based solely on feedback from 172,000 students at the 392 schools. Students completed a 98-question survey asking them to rate their colleges on dozens of topics, a news release from Princeton Review said.
Among those, ECU’s College of Business entrepreneurship program ranked 6th in Top South programs and in the Top 50 in the U.S. ECU ranked 15th for intramural sports participation.
The Best Colleges for 2027 are posted online at the Princeton Review, where they are searchable for free. They are also published in a 25-page chapter of “The Best 392 Colleges: 2027 Edition” available for purchase. The book is the 35th edition of the company’s flagship college guide.
In a news release, Rob Franek, lead author and editor-in-chief of The Princeton Review, shared more about the recognition.
“The colleges we profile in The Best 392 Colleges vary by type, size, locale and campus culture. In our opinion, each one offers an academically outstanding undergraduate education,” Franek said. “They are truly a select group: they comprise only about 14% of America’s nearly 2,800 four-year colleges.
“The colleges that make our ranking lists in the book do so entirely as a result of their own students’ opinions of them,” Franek added. “We don’t rank the schools on a single hierarchical list, nor have we ever crowned one college ‘best’ overall. No school is best overall. For 35 years, our goal for this project has been to create multiple ranking lists and resources to help college applicants answer what is likely the toughest but also the most important question in their journey to college: ‘Which college is best for me?’”