Campus Pride Issues Warning regarding the Princeton Review’s Top 20 “Gay Community Accepted” College Ranking

National nonprofit organization states that the educational preparatory company's college ranking is "erroneous & potentially misleading, harmful to LGBT youth & families"

(CHARLOTTE, NC, Thursday, August 13, 2009) -- Campus Pride issues a warning regarding the Top 20 “Gay Community Accepted” and “Alternative Lifestyle Not an Alternative” rankings in the 2010 edition of the Princeton Review’s annual college guide The Best 371 Colleges (Random House/Princeton Review, $22.99). The national nonprofit organization believes that not only is the use of “alternative lifestyle” problematic when referring to the lives of LGBT people, but the methodology Princeton Review used to garner their findings is too simplistic and could potentially lead to harmful, unsafe choices for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) students looking for acceptance and support during college.

The criteria that Princeton Review used to determine the best LGBT “acceptance” at colleges was not based on significant LGBT student opinions or research related to inclusive LGBT policies, programs or practices as one might expect. Their rankings were based off one single question asked to 122,000 students at the 371 top colleges -- whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “Students, faculty, and administrators treat all persons equally regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.”