What are the best college radio stations? I’ve enjoyed scrutinizing these sorts of lists for years, in particular Princeton Review’s “best college radio station” rankings in its yearly college guides. Based on student surveys, these lists attempt to rank the popularity of college radio on the campuses which participate in the Princeton Review surveys. The most recent list was published in August, 2022 in the The Best 388 Colleges: 2023 Edition (more on that in a future post). The equivalent list was two years prior in the 2021 edition that was released in August, 2020.
In-between those years, during the height of COVID, the 2022 edition (The Best 387 Colleges: 2022 Edition, released in August, 2021) took a different approach to the rankings when it became more difficult to get student survey results. This is the list that I’m going to focus on for this post. Labelled “Great College Radio Station,” the list of 28 schools is in alphabetical order and is not meant to be a ranking of schools. It’s more of a “best of” list from the past 30 years worth of student survey results from Princeton Review.
As I’ve seen before in other Princeton Review lists, the northeast is over represented, with 17 schools (including 9 from New York, 2 from New Jersey, 2 from Rhode Island, 1 from Pennsylvania, 1 from Maine, 1 from Vermont, and 1 from Massachusetts.) Four west coast schools make the list (2 from Washington, 1 from California and 1 from Oregon). Four schools are from the midwest (Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois) and three are from the south (D.C., North Carolina, and Louisiana).
And, in an interesting coincidence, this list of 28 great college radio stations includes the school where I took my first station field trip (Emerson College – WECB) and a school that was on my most recent round of New York tours in 2022 (Union College – WRUC). I’ve visited seven of the schools on the best radio station list, but would love to tour the remaining 21 colleges!
Methodology for the Princeton Review “Great College Radio Station” List (2022 edition)
The “Great College Radio Station” list is part of a bigger collection of 26 “great lists,” a unique feature of the 30th edition of the Princeton Review (2022 edition, released in August 2021). A representative from Princeton Review explained the impetus for this new approach, emailing me that “It was the 30th anniversary of our Best Colleges, and since the pandemic made it so difficult to get a good student survey sample, we reflected on those 30 years and came up with a series of Great Lists. These were unranked but represented the strongest-performing institutions in the categories over the last 30 years.”
A press release at the time of the 2022 edition’s debut stated that these “great” lists “identify the colleges in the book with the most impressive history of appearances on company’s annual ‘Best of’ ranking lists over the years.” The lists, including the “Great College Radio Station” list were crafted “by doing a deep data dive through the book’s ranking lists in past editions all the way back to the first edition in 1992. The selections were based on three criteria: the number of times a college appeared on a list (including how recent the last appearance was), its numerical rank when on a list, and the overall consistency of feedback from the schools’ surveyed students in a given category. Each “Great List” names from 16 to 29 schools in alphabetical (not ranked) order,” according to a press release from Princeton Review.
It’s pretty exciting to me that the folks at Princeton Review potentially scanned through all the “Best College Radio Station” lists since 1992. I’ve only been tracking the lists since the 2008 edition, but would LOVE to see the full archive.
For Princeton Review College Radio Lists, Great = Popular
While this list for the 2022 edition is called “Great College Radio Station,” it’s important to remember that these “great lists” were compiled from results of student surveys that focus more on popularity vs. perceived “greatness” of a college radio station. Here’s more scoop:
1. In typical years, ranked list results are based on student surveys
2. Surveys are conducted at a finite number of colleges each year (since 2008 that’s hovered between 366 and 388 colleges)
3. Students are asked to judge the popularity, not the quality, of an unspecified campus radio station at their own college
4. Radio stations are not named in the survey or in the resulting rankings
5. Only schools surveyed can make it into the rankings, so college radio stations at schools that are not surveyed by Princeton Review won’t appear on the list
A number of colleges appearing on the “Best College Radio Station” and “Great College Radio Stations” lists have multiple radio stations, including student-run stations, large public radio stations, and everything in between. It makes sense that students would indicate that their school’s radio station is “popular” if they are on a campus with a high profile professional radio station and/or with several radio stations.
How Similar is 2022 Great College Radio List to Prior Best Lists?
It’s really tricky comparing the “Great College Radio Station” list to prior “Best College Radio Station” lists, since it’s not ranked and features more radio stations. However, and not surprisingly, the schools on the list are ones that we’ve regularly seen in the past few years. Half of the schools (14) were on the prior edition’s ranked list (2021 edition) of 20 stations.
The complete list for the 2022 edition (released in August, 2021) is outlined below (for comparison, here are the lists from the 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008 editions of Princeton Review).
2022 Princeton Review Great List: Great College Radio Station
(released in August, 2021)
Note: I’ve added station names and call signs as the Princeton Review only lists school names.
List is in alphabetical order and is not ranked
- Bates College (WRBC 91.5 FM, Lewiston, ME)
- Brown University (WBRU 95.5 FM and Brown Student Radio, Providence, RI)
- Carleton College (KRLX 88.1 FM, Northfield, MN). See my KRLX tour: Station Field Trip #92
- Chapman University (ChapmanRadio.com, Orange, CA)
- Columbia University (WKCR 89.9 FM, New York, NY). See my WKCR tour: Station Field Trip #141 and catch more on Podcast #136
- Denison University (WDUB 91.1 FM, Granville, OH)
- DePauw University (WGRE 91.5 FM, Greencastle, Indiana)
- Drew University (WMNJ The Forest, Madison, NJ)
- Emerson College (WERS 88.9FM & WECB, Boston, MA) WECB tour: Station Field Trip #1
- Fordham University (WFUV 90.7 FM, Bronx, NY) See my WFUV tour: Station Field Trip #139
- Franklin & Marshall College (WFNM 89.1 FM, Lancaster, PA)
- Guilford College (WQFS 90.9 FM, Greensboro, NC)
- Hofstra University (WRHU 88.7 FM, Hempstead, New York)
- Howard University (WHUR 96.3 FM and WHBC 96.3 FM HD3 Washington, DC). See my WHBC tour: Station Field Trip #86
- Ithaca College (WICB 91.7 FM and VIC Radio, Ithaca, New York)
- Knox College (WVKC 90.7 HD2, Galesburg, Illinois)
- Louisiana State University—Baton Rouge (KLSU 91.1 FM, Baton Rouge, LA)
- Manhattanville College (WMVL, Purchase, NY) – websites are down and the most recent social media activity was on Instagram in October, 2019, but station appears to have had weekly meetings in 2022
- Providence College (WDOM 91.3 FM, Providence, RI)
- Reed College (KRRC, Portland, OR). See my KRRC tour: Station Field Trip #44
- St. Michael’s College (WWPV-LP 92.5 FM The Mike, Colchester, VT)
- Seton Hall University (WSOU 89.5 FM, South Orange, NJ)
- Skidmore College (WSPN 91.1 FM, Saratoga Springs, NY)
- St. Bonaventure University (WSBU-88.3 FM, St. Bonaventure, NY)
- Syracuse University (WAER 88.3 FM, WERW, WJPZ 89.1 FM, Syracuse, NY)
- Union College (WRUC 89.7 FM, Schenectady, NY) Hear about my WRUC tour on Podcast #329
- University of Puget Sound (KUPS 90.1 FM, Tacoma, Washington)
- Washington State University (KZUU 90.7 FM, KUGR and Northwest Public Radio, Pullman, WA)
Learn More about College Radio
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