- Project entailed surveys of college administrators, students, and applicants
- 250 Princeton Review college profiles now include information about the schools' mental health and wellness services
- 16 colleges named to The Princeton Review's 2025 Mental Health Services Honor Roll
NEW YORK, October 28, 2024 / - The Princeton Review®, one of the nation's leading education services companies, today reported results of its multifaceted yearlong project designed to promote mental health resources on college campuses as well as student awareness of them.
The project was conducted in partnership with the Ruderman Family Foundation, an internationally recognized organization that works to end the stigma associated with mental health and increase awareness of-and the availability of-mental health services.
Launched in October 2023, the project began with The Princeton Review's development of its Campus Mental Health Advisory Board. Comprised of professionals with experience in the field of student mental health, the board played a seminal role in shaping the project's school outreach, data collection, survey planning, Honor Roll School list criteria, and more. (Board member names and affiliations are below.)
The project data collection phase that followed was threefold. During the 2023-2024 academic year, The Princeton Review surveyed college administrators nationwide about the availability and extent of their mental health services and wellness resources for students. The company also surveyed students at more than 200 colleges and universities about their school's mental health and wellness services. In a third survey cycle, the company polled nearly 11,000 college applicants and their parents on whether having information about a college's mental health and wellness services would affect their consideration of the school. (Selected findings of the surveys are below.)
Today, the project advanced to its resource-reporting phase which has two parts. The Princeton Review has uploaded information it collected from 250 colleges and universities about their mental health and wellness services to its profiles of the schools on PrincetonReview.com where they are accessible for free. (A list of the colleges and universities that reported data about their mental health services is posted here.) The company's school profiles in forthcoming editions of The Princeton Review's annual Best Colleges guidebook will also feature information about schools' mental health and wellness services. As part of The Princeton Review's long-term commitment to this project, the company will continue to collect, report, and promote this information in its subsequent online and print college profiles.
Today, The Princeton Review also named 16 institutions to its 2025 Mental Health Services Honor Roll list. (The full list and information about the criteria for this designation are below and posted here.) The company has also launched a content hub on its website dedicated to information about mental health resources. Some of the featured articles include "Five Need-to-Know National Organizations for Mental Health Awareness" and "Give Yourself a Mental Health Checkup."
"For more than 40 years, our company has annually helped millions of students research, apply to, and gain admission to colleges," said Rob Franek, The Princeton Review's Editor-in-Chief. "Getting into college, however, is just the beginning-as educators, parents, and college students themselves well know. For many students, the college experience brings challenges that strain their overall well-being, their mental and physical health, and their ability to succeed in school. With reports of high levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and other issues among college students, campus mental health and wellness services have never been so necessary."
"Our project-a partnership with the Ruderman Family Foundation-was created to shine a light on this concerning situation and increase awareness of such services on college campuses. The Foundation has an extraordinary record of advancing mental health programs to help people facing adversity and we deeply appreciate its inspiring support for this project. We will continue to collect and report information about campus mental health services and, most importantly, to encourage college students to learn about, recommend, and access them" Franek added.
"The Ruderman Family Foundation is committed to raising awareness and expanding services to college students. We find ourselves in a time when our society has to take responsibility for student well-being, and universities play a key role. The Princeton Review's 2024 Campus Mental Health Survey marks a crucial step to raise greater awareness among students and their families regarding the mental health landscape at the schools where they are applying and enrolling," said Jay Ruderman, President of the Ruderman Family Foundation.
"In particular, paying close attention to the institutions listed in the survey's Campus Mental Health Honor Roll will enable prospective students who prioritize mental health to get a keen sense of which campuses offer the strongest resources and programs that will meet their needs. We commend the universities that chose to take part in this first survey and lead by example. Accordingly, the Foundation is pleased to continue and expand our partnership with The Princeton Review, who is the best partner to educate our society and the higher education community about student mental health and well-being," Ruderman added.
Selected Findings of Project Surveys
On The Princeton Review's 2023-2024 survey of administrators at more than 2,000 colleges, the company asked administrators 52 questions about their institution's mental health services for students. Based on responses from the more than 250 administrators that fully answered the questions:
· 87% of the colleges have a website that consolidates information about the school's mental health
services; 13% don't.
· 56% of the colleges have a fully staffed counseling center open year-round; 44% don't.
· 29% of the colleges have a counseling center that is accredited; 71% don't.
· 28% of the colleges conduct formal wellness screenings of their students; 72% don't.
On The Princeton Review's annual survey of college students which invites students to rate their schools on dozens topics and report on their campus experiences at them, the company included four questions about campus mental health services. Among students from more than 200 colleges that answered these survey questions:
· 78% agreed with the statement "If I needed to seek professional help for my mental or emotional health, I would know where to access my school's resources"; 7% disagreed with it; and 15% neither agreed or disagreed.
· 61% agreed with the statement "My college prioritizes students' mental health"; 10% disagreed with it; and 29% neither agreed or disagreed.
The Princeton Review has posted a downloadable report of its 2023-2024 Campus Mental Health Survey on its website here. The report shows the survey questions, answer choices, and percentages of respondents selecting each answer.
On The Princeton Review's 2024 College Hopes & Worries Survey which polled 10,800 college applicants and their parents in January-February about their application perspectives, one of the survey's 20 questions was on the topic of campus health services. Respondents were asked whether having information about a college's health, mental health, and wellness services would contribute to their decision to apply to (and/or attend) the school. Overall, 89% of respondents said such information would affect their decision. Of that cohort of 89%, 53% indicated they would be "Strongly" or "Very" interested in having such information about schools they were considering.
An infographic depicting selected findings of the project surveys is posted here.
2024-2025 Campus Mental Health Advisory Board
Senior Research Scientist, NORC; Clinical Associate Professor, University of Albany School of Public Health; President, New York State Public Health Association
Sarah Ketchen Lipson, PhD, EdM
Boston University, Associate Professor, Health Law Policy and Management; Principal Investigator, Health Minds Network
Nadja Lopez, PhD
William James College, Executive Director, Center for Behavioral Health, Equity, and Leadership in Schools; Director, Graduate Certificate in Classroom Mental Health Faculty, Children and Families of Adversity and Resilience Concentration; Adjunct Faculty, School Psychology Department
Karen Singleton, PhD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Associate Medical Director and Chief of Mental Health & Counseling Services, MIT Medical
The Princeton Review's 2025 Mental Health Services Honor Roll Schools
Note: The 16 schools below are in alphabetical order.
Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ)
Boston University (Boston, MA)
Coastal Carolina University (Conway, SC)
Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO)
Columbia University (New York, NY)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)
New York University (New York, NY)
Princeton University (Princeton, NJ)
State University of New York-University at Albany (Albany, NY)
University of Central Florida (Orlando, FL)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC)
University of North Carolina at Greensboro (Greensboro, NC)
University of North Dakota (Grand Forks, ND)
University of San Diego (San Diego, CA)
Weber State University (Ogden, UT)
William & Mary (Williamsburg, VA)
The schools chosen for the Honor Roll displayed an exceptional commitment to their students' mental health and well-being. The project's Campus Mental Health Advisory Board set the criteria for the selections. Based on data from the project surveys, the criteria broadly looked at:
· overall administrative support for campus mental health and well-being through the school's policies including commitments to staffing and student support
· whether the schools' students have a campus quality of life that is both healthy and attentive to the students' overall well-being
· how well the school is empowering its students to address their own mental health through education programs and peer-to-peer offerings.
Note: The Princeton Review did not (and will not) use data it collects for this project to rank or rate colleges on their mental health services.
In addition to materials The Princeton Review developed for this project, the company has other health-related resources for students. They include a book, The College Wellness Guide: A Student's Guide to Managing Mental, Physical, and Social Health on Campus (August 2021), and two college ranking lists that focus on health-related services. The lists, which are part of the company's 50 categories of school rankings in its annual "Best Colleges" guidebook, name the top 25 colleges (of those in the book) for Best Health Services and the top 25 colleges for Best Student Support and Counseling Services. Information about the company's college ranking lists in this book, the current edition of which is The Best 390 Colleges: 2025 Edition, and the methodology for the rankings are here.
For the Ruderman Family Foundation, this project is part of its mission to expand access to mental health resources and programs in the high school and higher education communities. Other initiatives from the Foundation in that realm include partnering with the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University to offer mental health training to pairs of spiritual care providers and mental health counselors at college campuses; establishing the Ruderman Family Foundation Fellowship for Campus Behavioral Health at William James College to equip faculty members with the skills to offer emotional support to students in distress; and working with Boston University to release a first-of-its-kind set of manuals to establish best practices for college campus leave-of-absence policies.
About The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review is a leading tutoring, test prep, and college admissions services company. Every year, it helps millions of college- and graduate school-bound students as well as working professionals achieve their education and career goals through its many education services and products. These include online and in-person courses delivered by a network of more than 4,000 teachers and tutors; online resources; more than 150 print and digital books published by Penguin Random House; and dozens of categories of school rankings. Founded in 1981, The Princeton Review is now in its 43 rd year. The company's Tutor.com brand, now in its 24 th year, is one of the largest online tutoring services in the U.S. It comprises a community of thousands of tutors who have delivered more than 27 million tutoring sessions. The Princeton Review is headquartered in New York, NY. The Princeton Review is not affiliated with Princeton University. For more information, visit PrincetonReview.com and the company's Media Center. Follow the company on X (formerly Twitter) @ThePrincetonRev and Instagram @theprincetonreview.
About the Ruderman Family Foundation
The Ruderman Family Foundation is an internationally recognized organization that works to end the stigma associated with mental health. The Foundation does this by identifying gaps in mental health resources and programs in the high school and higher education communities as well as by organizing other local and national programs and initiatives that raise awareness of the stigma. The Ruderman Family Foundation believes that inclusion and understanding of all people is essential to a fair and flourishing community and promotes these values in its funding. For more information, visit www.rudermanfoundation.org.
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SOURCE: The Princeton Review
CONTACTS: The Princeton Review: Jeanne Krier, pressoffice@review.com; Ruderman Family Foundation: James Fattal, james@jcubedpr.com
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