The 2027 edition of "The Best 392 Colleges" ranks Elon University among the nation’s best in multiple categories, including #1 Best College Theater and #4 Best Classroom Experience.
The Princeton Review has again featured Elon University in a popular college guide that annually recognizes excellence in dozens of categories, with the university placing among the top 25 schools in 15 categories and in the top 10 of eight categories, including #1 Best College Theater.
Elon’s profile in “The Best 392 Colleges: 2027 Edition” includes more than a dozen recognitions:
- #1 Best College Theater
- #4 Best Classroom Experience
- #6 Best Student Support and Counseling Services
- #6 Best College Dorms
- #8 Happiest Students
- #9 Most Beautiful Campus
- #9 Everyone Plays Intramural Sports
- #10 Their Students Love These Colleges
- #11 Best Campus Food
- #12 Best Career Services
- #12 Best-Run Colleges
- #18 Most Active Student Government
- #23 Professors Get High Marks
- #24 Best Quality of Life
- #25 Green Matters: Everyone Cares About Conservation
The Princeton Review chose the 392 colleges for the book based on its surveys in 2025-26 of 2,000 college administrators about their school’s academic offerings. The company also surveyed students attending the colleges in the book who rated their schools on dozens of topics and reported on their campus experiences at them. Only about 14% of America’s nearly 2,800 four-year colleges are in the book.
“We are delighted to name Elon one of our Best Colleges for 2027, and we recommend it to students searching for their ‘best-fit’ college,” said Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief and lead author of The Best 392 Colleges. “Elon has outstanding academic programs; we also took into account the candid feedback we received about it from its very own customers—its enrolled students.”
The rankings are entirely based on the company’s surveys of students attending the schools in the book 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.
Select Responses Cited in “The Best 391 Colleges”
- Elon provides “meaningful access to professors, research opportunities, internships, and leadership roles early…which allows (students) to explore their interests in practical, hands-on ways.”
- “Everyone from the most esteemed professors to our incredible dining hall workers, to the student life staff, to our groundskeepers” is described as “the most incredible support system.”
- Faculty are “highly experienced and enthusiastic” who do “constant check-ups and meetings with you. They want to make sure that you’re not only succeeding in their class, but also having an amazing, enriching time in college.”
- Students praised the small class sizes, which allow for bonding “with both my professors and my peers, and it gives me more opportunities for success.”
- Elon’s experiential learning model provides an opportunity “where students can use both classroom learning and real-world experience to understand the information being taught.”
- Students highlighted the university’s “strong culture of involvement” where “students are constantly balancing academics with leadership roles, service organizations, research, athletics, and creative projects, and that energy creates an environment where it feels normal to want to do big things.”
About the Princeton Review
The Princeton Review (www.PrincetonReview.com), 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.
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.