For a high school student, The Princeton Review is the Bible for all things collegiate; for a college student, perhaps less so. How does Brown compete with compare to other colleges this year? Happiest students? Brown gets bronze. Best newspaper? Honorable mention. Quality of Life? Número 11. However, upon closer inspection, it seems that there are several rankings from which Brown has mysteriously disappeared. Here are a few of them:

1. Most Liberal Students. You don’t see any elephants walking around campus, just quite a few asses.
2. Most LGBT-Friendly. Excuse me, Princeton Review, but I believe you are missing a ‘Q’ in there (and maybe some other letters). Do you even remember last year’s Waterman riots?
3. Least Religious Students. “I’m spiritual but not religious.”
4. Reefer Madness. 4/20 on the Main Green reeference.
5. Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians. Wait, you’re telling me that Brown is not on this list? Don’t worry man, it’s chill.

Who made you God, Princeton Review? Do you even believe in him (or capital H-i-m)? “Him,” oh how heteronormative.

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Yesterday was a sad, sad day for Brown University. The Princeton Review rolled out its annual batch of Arbitrary College Enumerations, and our beloved Brown University was shockingly absent from the #1 spot on the  Happiest Students list. Sure we are still number three, but we were dethroned by Rice University (?) and Clemson University (double ?).

What the Princeton Review doesn’t realize is that we Brown students have never been as unhappy as we were yesterday when our crown was stolen. Jenny Bloom ’12 wept over a Meeting Street cookie wondering if “it [were] just a self-fulfilling prophecy.”  Other students have taken to the streets crying for the rightful reclamation of our title. But most students have just sat on windowsills wondering what Rice and Clemson kids have that they don’t, besides the absence of a snowy, long, depressingly cold winter–who smells unfair advantage? Huffington Post voted us the 6th most hipster school (aren’t hipsters perpetually happy rubbing their egos?) and GQ took us out of the running for douchiest college, but this doesn’t seem to have helped us. Is it because we’re the next Ivy behind Princeton, Harvard and Yale in the 2011 Forbes rankings? Why oh why, Princeton Review, would you assume that we’re even a fraction as miserable as the students at those highly depressing regarded institutions? See BlogDailyHerald’s happiness solution after the jump [Read more →]

Brown University has topped Princeton Review’s list of the colleges with the happiest students for the second year in a row!

Princeton Review’s annual list of the Best Colleges in the country, this year 373, will be released in book form tomorrow. It ranks the top 20 schools in 62 categories.

Brown’s also ranked on four other lists: Best College Radio Station (#5), Best College Theater (#17), Lots of Race/Class Interaction (#18), and Best Quality of Life (#18).

I don’t think anyone really knows how they tabulate these things, some kind of survey, but good for Brown students for being (perceived as) happy. This is one ranking we kick ass at (unlike cough cough US News and World Report). Not that anyone cares about that sort of thing….