Individual college guides often tend to focus on a narrow set of criteria, but when taken together, they can help to present a more complete picture. Below is a summary of the College’s reviews in the latest editions of the various publications:

The Princeton Review

• Highest possible rating for academics (99)
• One of only 10 colleges nationwide to be named to the Financial Aid Honor Roll for receiving the highest financial aid rating (99)
• Named to select list of Best Value Colleges
• Quality of Life rating: 96
• Top 15 percent of American four-year colleges
• “Best in the West”
• Top 20 for: “Class Discussions Encouraged,” “No One Cheats,” “Students Are Very Religious,” “Dorms are like palaces,” “Low Cost of Living” and “Very Little Drug Use”
• Results from student survey include: “Catholic/small-college setting creates an atmosphere of trust and faith that makes it easier to study, to live, and to grow”; “strong Catholic identity”; and “rigorous curriculum”

U.S. News & World Report: “Best Colleges”

• Top tier among all liberal arts colleges
• Top 25 for “Least Debt” among graduates
• Top 40, “Great Schools, Great Prices”
• Most Popular among Applicants and Most Loved by Alumni

Association of College Trustees and Alumni  

• Top 2 percent of country’s major colleges and Universities
• One of only three colleges in the U.S. to receive a perfect score for ensuring that students study seven key areas: composition, literature, American history, foreign language, mathematics, science, and economics.
• Highest rating — “A” — for strength of curriculum 

National Catholic Register

• One of only 31 colleges chosen for the “Catholic Identity College Guide ’11”
• Favorable marks in all 10 measures of campus fidelity and moral climate

Cardinal Newman Society

• One of only 21 recommended “faithful Catholic colleges in the United States”
• “Impressive intellectual rigor”
• “The intellectual environment is rigorous across the curriculum.”
• “Stands by itself among Catholic colleges”
• “Strong public witness to the Faith”

About.com

• One of 23 Top Catholic Colleges
• “Unique among the nation’s Catholic institutions of higher learning”
• “Approaches liberal education with a clear sense of purpose”
• “A broad and integrated liberal education”
• “Ranks highly among national liberal arts colleges”
• “Wins praise for its small classes and its value”

Forbes: America’s Best Colleges

• Top 25 in the West
• Top quartile, or the top 150 schools nationwide
• “unique education with courses based on the Great Books and seminar method”

Intercollegiate Studies Institute

• “One of the strongest curricula in the U.S.”
• A “corporate commitment to a rationally knowable objective reality”
• “Does not press its ideas onto students through lectures and textbooks, but genuinely tries to lead them through the Socratic method, placing the emphasis on their own reasoning powers as engaged with a text and other readers”

Kiplinger’s: “100 Best Values in Private Colleges”

• #4 for lowest “total cost per year”
• Top 20 for lowest average debt at graduation