LAURINBURG. – St. Andrews Presbyterian College has been named by U.S. News & World Report as one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges.

St. Andrews is also one of the best colleges and universities in the Southeast according to The Princeton Review. The education services company selected the school as one of the 141 institutions it recommends in its “Best in the Southeast” section of the website feature 2010 Best Colleges: Region by Region.

U.S. News bases its ranking of the top National Liberal Arts colleges and universities on 15 indicators including peer assessment, student selectivity, student retention rates, faculty resources, financial resources, graduation rate performance, and alumni giving rate. The annual list has included St. Andrews every year since 1996.

“Our inclusion in these listings further emphasizes the commitment St. Andrews has made to provide our students with a high quality of education at a reasonable cost,” said College President Paul Baldasare.

The 141 colleges The Princeton Review chose for its “Best in the Southeast” designation are located in 12 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The 640 colleges named “regional best(s)” represent only about 25 percent of the nation’s 2,500 four-year colleges.

“We chose St. Andrews and the other terrific schools we recommend as our ‘regional best’ colleges primarily for their excellent academic programs,” said Robert Franek, The Princeton Review’s vice president of publishing. “We also work to have our roster of ‘regional best’ colleges feature a range of institutions by size, selectivity, character and locale.

“We choose the schools based on institutional data we collect from several hundred schools in each region, our visits to schools over the years, and the opinions of independent and high school-based college advisors whose recommendations we invite,” Franek continued. “We also take into account what each school’s customers – their students – report to us about their campus experiences on our 80-question student survey.”

The Princeton Review does not rank the colleges in its 2010 Best Colleges Region by Region website section. The Princeton Review survey for this project asks students to rate their own schools on several issues – from the accessibility of their professors to the quality of the campus food – and answer questions about themselves, their fellow students, and their campus life. Actual comments from surveyed students pepper each college profile on the Princeton Review website.

Sample comments include:

“The equestrian facility is amazing and the nationally renowned riding program allows students to blend their love of horses with career education in equine business or therapeutic riding.”

“The accessible, intelligent professors are uniquely involved in your education. They know everyone by name and care about their students.”

The Princeton Review (www.princetonreview.com) is known for its tutoring and classroom test preparation courses, books, and college and graduate school admission services. Its corporate headquarters is in Framingham, Mass., and editorial offices are in New York City. It is not affiliated with Princeton University and it is not a magazine.

On Aug. 29, 1958, the merger between Presbyterian Junior College and Flora Macdonald College became official with the formation St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, N.C. Further information may be obtained by visiting the College's website www.sapc.edu, calling 800-763-0198 or sending an e-mail to info@sapc.edu.