2014 Princeton Review List of the Most Popular College Radio Stations

Today the Princeton Review released its latest college guide, which is full of college trivia, including the annual “best college radio station” list of the 20 schools with the most popular radio stations based on student surveys.  The Best 378 Colleges, 2014 Edition collects the results of mostly online surveys conducted with more than 126,000 students at the 378 institutions included in the book. An average of 333 students per school responded to the 80+ question survey. This year, there are some interesting radio stations on the “best college radio station” list, including a station that is rumored to be the oldest student radio station in the country.

Before I get into the results, I need to add a note about the survey methodology and about how the results are presented to readers. As I mentioned a few years ago, a question in the survey asks students to assess their school radio station’s popularity (This year’s question reads: “How popular is the college radio station?”), as opposed to whether or not it is the “best” radio station in the country. Additionally, the survey doesn’t ask students to differentiate between radio stations when a campus has multiple stations. For example, seven schools on this year’s list have multiple radio stations, which may in part account for why students may indicate that radio is so popular on those campuses. Additionally, this survey only includes the universe of 378 schools (and related stations) included in the guide.

This year’s Best College Radio Station category (registration required), is pretty similar to last year’s list, with 17 of the same schools as last year and 3 new schools appearing on the list. One of those news schools for 2014, Carleton College, has been on the list as recently as 2012, whereas the two other new schools, Union College and Syracuse University, haven’t appeared during the years that I’ve been tracking (since the 2008 list).

The complete list for 2014 is listed below (for comparison, here are the lists from the 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008 editions of Princeton Review). The “most popular” college stations for 2014 are:

2014 Princeton Review’s Most Popular College Radio Stations

(note: I’ve added station names and call signs as the Princeton Review only lists school names. Schools in bold were not on the list last year)

1. Ithaca College (WICB 91.7 FM and VIC Radio, Ithaca, New York)

2. DePauw University (WGRE 91.5 FM, Greencastle, Indiana)

3. Emerson College (WERS 88.9FM and WECB, Boston, MA)

4. St. Bonaventure University (WSBU-88.3 FM, St. Bonaventure, NY)

5. Hofstra University (WRHU 88.7 FM, Hempstead, New York)

6. Guilford College (WQFS 90.9 FM, Greensboro, NC)

7. Westminster College (WWNW 88.9 FM, New Wilmington, PA)

8. Fordham University (WFUV 90.7 FM, Bronx, NY)

9. Seton Hall University (WSOU 89.5 FM, South Orange, NJ)

10. Howard University (WHUR 96.3 FM and WHBC Washington, DC)

11. University of Puget Sound (KUPS 90.1 FM, Tacoma, Washington)

12. Bates College (WRBC 91.5 FM, Lewiston, Maine)

13. Syracuse University (WAER 88.3 FM, WERW, WJPZ 89.1 FM, Syracuse, NY)

14. The College of Wooster (WCWS 90.9 FM, Wooster, Ohio)

15. Union College (WRUC 89.7 FM, Schenectady, NY)

16. Sacred Heart University (WHRT and public radio station WSHU-FM, Fairfield, Connecticut)

17. Carleton College (KRLX 88.1 FM, Northfield, Minnesota)

18. Knox College (WVKC 90.7 FM, Galesburg, Illinois)

19. University of Kansas (KJHK 90.7 FM and public radio station KANU 91.5 FM, Lawrence, Kansas)

20. Brown University (BSR and WBRU, 95.5 FM, Providence, RI)

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