Purchase is a Top Green College
According to the Princeton Review’s Guide to Green Colleges: 2022 Edition, a unique resource for students interested in attending colleges with strong commitments to the environment and sustainability.
Purchase College is one of the nation’s 420 most environmentally responsible colleges, according to The Princeton Review Guide to Green Colleges: 2022 Edition. The Guide profiles 420 colleges out of 835 schools surveyed for this list.
The Guide evaluates colleges in terms of each school’s use of renewable energy, its recycling and conservation programs, the availability of environmental studies in academic offerings, and career guidance for green jobs. The profiles also include information on the schools’ admission requirements, cost, and financial aid.
In its profile on Purchase College, The Princeton Review showcases that Purchase’s green rating is a 93 out of 99. “The College has compiled a comprehensive energy master plan of energy efficiency and renewable energy projects as well as hired a Senior Energy Manager to focus on energy and sustainability issues. To reduce its purchasing carbon footprint, the college purchases green cleaning products, recycled paper and more than 20 percent of its food from local vendors. Academically, the school currently offers a major and a minor in Environmental Studies, which educate students in critical thinking both about the origins of environmental problems and the building blocks of environmental solutions.”
The school profiles in The Princeton Review Guide to Green Colleges present information on each school’s use of renewable energy, its recycling and conservation programs, the availability of environmental studies in academic offerings, and career guidance for green jobs. The profiles also include information on the schools’ admission requirements, cost, and financial aid.
78% percent of the 11,133 college applicants responding to The Princeton Review’s 2021 College Hopes & Worries Survey said that having information about a college’s commitment to the environment would affect their decision to apply to or attend a school. This figure was a 12% increase over the 66% of applicants so indicating on the 2020 survey. Sustainability is an increasing determining factor for prospective and current college students.
How Schools Were Chosen for the Guide
The Princeton Review chose the 420 colleges based on its 2020–21 survey of administrators at 835 colleges concerning their institutions’ sustainability-related policies, practices, and programs. The company’s editors analyzed more than 25 data points from the survey to tally Green Rating scores for the schools on a scale of 60 to 99. The Green Rating scores appear in the school profiles on The Princeton Review website and in The Princeton Review book, The Best 387 Colleges: 2022 Edition (published August 2021).
Colleges that earned a Green Rating score of 80 or higher were chosen for the Guide to Green Colleges. Of the 420 schools selected for the guide, 391 are in the U.S., 26 in Canada, one in Ecuador, one in Egypt, and one in Greece. The schools are listed alphabetically in the guide and not ranked overall from 1 to 420.