Princeton Review Names TAC a “Best Value College” for 2023

Guide: TAC has “Happiest” and “Most Religious” Students

“Thomas Aquinas College is one of the nation’s best colleges for students seeking a great education with excellent career preparation and at a relatively affordable price,” according to The Princeton Review, which has included the College on its list of Best Value Colleges for 2023. “Out of more than 650 colleges and universities we surveyed for our 2023 list, the schools we chose are those that earned our highest ROI (Return on Investment) ratings in this year’s analysis,” adds Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief.

Alongside this broad acknowledgement of the overall value of a TAC education, the Review also highly rated the College on specific areas: 91 for academics, 93 for quality of life, 96 for financial aid, and 98 in faculty accessibility.

Moreover, based on its survey of students at the 209 schools that made the “Best Value” list, The Princeton Review ranked Thomas Aquinas College:

• #1 for Most Religious Students
• #3 for Lots of Race/Class Interaction
• #4 for Best Classroom Experience
• #6 for Most Beautiful Campus
• #7 for Great Financial Aid
• #8 for Happiest Students

In its profile, the annual college guide quotes extensively from the College’s students. Among their comments:

• “Students have a wide spectrum of terms with which to describe their unique education: ‘difficult, mind blowing, extremely enjoyable, and intensely interesting.’”
• “Students say [tutors] are excellent at facilitating discussions, ‘always accessible outside of their class hours,’ and ‘strong role models and mentors.’”
• “Students say the combination of curriculum and pedagogy allows them to ‘find the truth themselves,’ hone their critical thinking skills, and, by senior year, grasp essential ‘core ideas of the highest nature such as relativity, time, space and being.’”
• “TAC students take pride in the ‘culture of casual kindnesses,’ where everyone ‘is friendly and comfortable with each other’ and is ‘always willing to have a good conversation.’”
• “Students describe their peers as ‘kind,’ ‘quirky,’ ‘genuine,’ and united by ‘a desire for [pursuing] knowledge for its own sake.’”

“We commend — and recommend — each of the 209 schools that made our Best Value Colleges list for 2023,” remarked Mr. Franek.“They share three exceptional distinctions: stellar academics, strong career prospects for their graduates, and affordable cost via generous financial aid or a comparatively low sticker price (or both!). For these reasons and many others, our Best Value Colleges are truly a select group. They comprise only about 8 percent of the nation’s 2,637 four-year undergraduate degree-granting institutions.”

“We are grateful that the Princeton Review has, once again, highlighted both the quality of our academic program and the affordability of this education,” says Chris Weinkopf, Thomas Aquinas College’s executive director of college relations. “Yet especially noteworthy are the high marks it has given for the accessibility of our faculty and the quality of our classroom conversations, which are at the heart of our academic program. These high rankings, coming from a secular college guide, speak to the universal value of Catholic liberal education.”