Reed received 16 rankings overall, all in the top 25.
August 18, 2026
Reed College is one of the nation's best academic undergraduate institutions, including providing the best classroom experience in the country, according to the education services company The Princeton Review.
The Princeton Review just released its rankings list of The Best 392 Colleges, and Reed garnered 16 rankings, all in the top 25. These include:
- #1 Best Classroom Experience
- #2 Professors Get High Marks
- #2 Most Politically Liberal Students
- #2 Least Religious Students
- #2 Best College Radio Station
- #4 Most Politically Active Students
- #5 Great Financial Aid
- #5 LGBTQ-Friendly
- #6 Reefer Madness
- #8 Students Study the Most
- #11 Best College Library
- #15 Best College Newspaper
- #16 Most Beautiful Campus
- #16 Best College Dorms
- #23 Most Active Student Government
- #24 Most Accessible Professors
The rankings are entirely based on the company's surveys of students who reported on their campus experiences at their schools. Surveys of 172,000 students (about 439 per school on average) were tallied for the rankings in The Best 392 Colleges. Information on the methodology for the rankings and the student survey is published in the book and on The Princeton Review’s website.
The Princeton Review also tallies ratings (scores from 60 to 99) of the schools in The Best 392 Colleges in eight categories. The ratings are primarily based on institutional survey data. A few ratings score tallies also factor in student survey data.
Reed received the following ratings scores:
- Admissions 94/99
- Fire Safety 97/99
- Financial Aid 99/99
- Academic 96/99
- Professors Interesting 97/99
- Professors Accessibility 96/99
- Quality of Life 91/99
Reed also was named to The Princeton Review’s 2027 Financial Aid Honor Roll for receiving a perfect score in that category. The college offers the Reed Promise, which allows students from homes making less than $100,000 annually to receive free tuition. Reed meets all demonstrated financial need for students who are admitted.
The Princeton Review chose the 392 colleges for the book based on its surveys in 2025–2026 of 2,000 college administrators about their school's academic offerings. (Only about 14% of America’s nearly 2,800 four-year colleges are in the book.)
The Best 392 Colleges is the 35th annual edition of The Princeton Review's flagship college guide which debuted in 1992. It is one of more than 150 Princeton Review books in a line published by Penguin Random House. The book and its annual student-survey-based college rankings have been featured on NBC TODAY more than two dozen times over the years and referenced by media from NPR to The Wall Street Journal and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Princeton Review, founded in 1981, is an education services company known for its tutoring, test-prep, admission services, school rankings, books, and other resources. Headquartered in New York, NY, it is not affiliated with Princeton University, and it is not a magazine.