Brown Named Top 10 Happiest and Most Stressful in US—Newsweek
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Can you be happy and stressed out? At Brown University you can, according to the latest rankings from Newsweek Magazine's The Daily Beast.
Newsweek partnered with College Prowler to rank colleges on a number of hot topics--beauty, rigor, and affordability, to name just a few. For the happiness ranking, Newsweek looked at student satisfaction with their college experience, if they would attend the same school given a choice, and retention rate.
Happy + stressed at Brown
With a full-time retention rate at 98 percent and 91 percent of students saying they would choose Brown again, it's no wonder the university finally made Newsweek's happiness charts this year--though last year it did not make the Top 25. But Brown still fell behind the top three most happy schools in 2012--Stanford University at #1, Minnesota's Carleton College at #2, and Yale University at #3.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTYet happy students are not necessarily stress-free, according to Newsweek's rankings. Brown does not fair well when it comes to stress, moving up from #17 most stressful in 2011 to a frightening #6, just behind Harvard University at #4 and Columbia University at #3.
This year, the odd happiness-stress combo is due to Newsweek's formula for stress, which is based on six metrics and heavily emphasizes financial matters--tuition, percent of students receiving financial aid, the average amount of financial aid, selectivity, and crime. About half of Brown students receive aid, though the tuition is more than $55K per year.
PC and Salve Regina: Politics + money
Providence College has been named amongst the top 20 most conservative colleges, at #19. Thirty-one percent of the students at PC consider their campus very conservative, while 38 percent consider it conservative. To contrast, Brown was named the #23 most liberal school, with 44 percent of students identifying the student body as very liberal and 48 percent deeming it liberal.
Newport's Salve Regina University ranked at #23 least affordable, with 84 percent of students graduating with debt, at an average of $35,737. The ranking was based on long-term affordability--debt after graduating, tuition, financial aid, and future earnings.
To see all the rankings, go here.
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