University of St. Francis (USF) is one of the nation’s academically best undergraduate institutions according to the education services company The Princeton Review®.
Joliet, Ill. – The company profiles USF in the 2026 edition of its annual college guide, The Best 391 Colleges (August 12, 2025, Penguin Random House) and its website feature about the project.
Only about 15% of America’s nearly 2,400 four-year colleges are included in The Princeton Review guidebook. The company chose the colleges for the book based its surveys of 2,000 college administrators about their institutions’ academic offerings. The company also surveyed students attending the colleges in the book who rated their own schools on dozens of topics and reported on their campus experiences at them.
In The Princeton Review profile on USF, the company’s editors praise the school for its lab facilities, and quote from USF students they surveyed for the project who described the college as a “welcoming” and “friendly environment.”
“University of St. Francis has outstanding academic programs and the feedback we received about USF from its students we surveyed was very impressive,” said Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s Editor-in-Chief and lead author of The Best 391 Colleges. “We are delighted to name University of St. Francis one of our Best Colleges for 2026 and to recommend it to students searching for their ‘best-fit’ college,”
The Princeton Review does not rank the schools in The Best 391 Colleges hierarchically from 1 to 391.
The Best 391 Colleges has 50 categories of ranking lists: each list names the top 25 schools (of those in the book) in a particular category. The rankings are entirely based on company’s surveys of students attending the 391 profiled schools. Surveys of 170,000 students (about 435 per school on average) were tallied for the rankings in The Best 391 Colleges.
University of St. Francis appears on the following ranking lists in The Best 391 Colleges:
Best Science Lab Facilities #11 and Most Active Student Government #25. Information on the methodology for the rankings and the student survey is on The Princeton Review’s website here.
The Princeton Review tallies rating scores (from 60 to 99) for the schools in The Best 391 Colleges in eight categories. The ratings are primarily based on institutional survey data. A few rating scores also factor in student survey data. The rating scores are published in the profiles of the schools in the book as well as in the website profiles. Information on The Princeton Review college ratings may be found here.
Details about The Princeton Review Best Colleges for 2026 project—the school names, profiles, ranking lists, and rating scores—are posted on PrincetonReview.com. The Best 391 Colleges is one of more than 150 Princeton Review books in a line published by Penguin Random House. The book and its annual 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 (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.
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The University of St. Francis, in Joliet, Ill., serves close to 4,000 students nationwide and offers undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and certificate programs in the arts and sciences, business, education, nursing and social work. There are over 54,000 USF alumni across the globe. For information, call 800-735-7500 or visit stfrancis.edu.
University of St. Francis: Bigger thinking. Brighter purpose.
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