August is peak season for college guides, and Bates continues to get high marks in them.

In the 2007 edition of U.S. News & World Report ‘s America’s Best Colleges, Bates is ranked 23rd among 215 national liberal arts colleges. The magazine says its rankings are based on peer assessment of presidents and deans, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources of the institution, alumni giving and graduation rates.

Among U.S. News’ subcategory lists of distinction are colleges whose graduates leave with the least debt. Bates is ranked 21st among national liberal arts colleges – and lowest among Maine’s private colleges – based on 46 percent of its students graduating with loans totaling an average of $13,636. Bates also is in U.S. News online lists for “great schools at great values,” lists that weigh quality against price and financial assistance, and in online lists citing excellent “undergraduate research/creative programs” and “service-learning programs.”

Bates is included in the latest edition of Princeton Review’s college guide The Best 361 Colleges, which went on sale Aug. 22. The Web site includes Bates in several sublists, including “Best in the Northeast” and “Best Value College.” It ranks Bates 20th in the nation for “Best Campus Food.” It lists Bates among 81 unranked “Colleges with a Conscience,” based on students’ “interaction with the surrounding community or pressing global, national, or local issues.”

The Princeton Review says that since Bates students are away from big-city pressures, they can afford the luxury of being “laid back and willing to take time to chat with friends over coffee, read the newspaper, go to plays, become engaged in the community and be active politically. Students value not only the academic experience they are offered at Bates, but take advantage of other fashions of learning.”

Citing student responses to surveys, the Review says that those seeking “a high-paced rigorous academic college with a low-key, laid-back, and fun student body and campus life” should consider Bates, a small liberal arts school that “focuses on students becoming critically and creatively thinking citizens of the world” through first-year seminars, mandatory senior theses, and a range of departmental, interdisciplinary, and student-designed majors.

In the September 2006 Washington Monthly college guide, Bates is listed 26th out of 202 liberal arts colleges. “Other guides ask what colleges can do for you,” the magazine says on its Web site. “We ask what are colleges doing for the country.” The Washington Monthly says its three primary criteria are that schools “should be engines of social mobility, they should produce the academic minds and scientific research that advance knowledge and drive economic growth, and they should inculcate and encourage an ethic of service.”

Bates is listed in the “most competitive” category of the 27th edition of Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges.

In the U.S. News & World Report 2006 edition of America’s Best Colleges, Bates ranks 21st nationally among 215 liberal arts colleges. The magazine says its rankings are based on a mix of peer assessment, rates of student retention and graduation, faculty resources, admissions selectivity, financial resources and alumni giving.

Bates was ranked 22nd last year. Since 1987, with the exception of 1991, Bates’ rank has ranged from 18th to 23rd. Bates also was included in U.S. News lists of top 26 liberal arts colleges for “least debt” and “economic diversity.”

In April, Bates was named the nation’s No. 1 “best value” college by The Princeton Review. The New York-based education services company features the school in its “Top 10 Best Value Colleges” ranking list in the 2006 edition of its book, America’s Best Value Colleges.

According to a news release from The Princeton Review, the guide profiles 81 colleges with outstanding academics, generous financial aid packages and relatively low costs. It includes public and private colleges and universities in 35 states.

Bates also is among 81 unranked colleges designated “Colleges with a Conscience: 81 Great Schools with Outstanding Community Involvement” by The Princeton Review and Campus Compact.

The Princeton Review’s Best 361 Colleges guidebook, which came out Aug. 23, quotes student comments that Bates is for those seeking “a high-paced rigorous academic college with a low-key, laid-back and fun student body and campus life” and that the college “focuses on students becoming critically and creatively thinking citizens of the world.” The latest guidebook also lists Bates as No. 16 in the nation for “Best College Radio Station,” and No. 17 for “Best Campus Food.”

New to college-ranking publications this year is The Washington Monthly, which ranked Bates 22nd in a list of the nation’s top 30 liberal arts colleges. The Washington Monthly list uses the percentage of students in Army or Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps, the percentage of graduates in the Peace Corps, the percentage of federal work-study grants used for community service projects, the total amount of research spending, the number of doctorates granted in the hard sciences and, as a measure of social mobility, the percentage of students on Pell Grants. “Other guides ask what colleges can do for you,” the magazine announces in the September issue. “We ask what are colleges doing for the country.”

Although it is not a college guidebook, the Teagle Foundation included Bates this year in its list of 13 “overachieving” liberal arts colleges singled out for both high graduation rates and Ph.D. completion by graduates.

Bates College is one of the nation’s best colleges fostering social responsibility and public service, according to The Princeton Review and Campus Compact. It is one of 81 institutions in 33 states that The Princeton Review commends and features in its forthcoming book, Colleges with a Conscience: 81 Great Schools with Outstanding Community Involvement (Random House / Princeton Review Books, 2005). Available in bookstores on June 21, the book has two-page profiles on each college and advice for applicants.

“A college with a conscience,” says Robert Franek, Princeton Review vice president, admissions services, “has both an administration committed to social responsibility and a student body actively engaged in serving society. Education at these schools isn’t only about private gain: it’s about the public good.”

“We are honored to receive the national recognition that comes with inclusion in this publication,” said Sue Martin, associate director of the Bates College Center for Service-Learning. “Service-learning has a long history at Bates, and this brings particular attention to the academic emphasis of our work. It is a tribute to our community partners, our faculty, and most of all, our students,” Martin said.

The Princeton Review, which produces classroom and online test-prep courses, books and other education services, partnered with Campus Compact, a national organization committed to the civic purposes of higher education, to develop Colleges with a Conscience and choose the schools featured in the book.

The book’s editors also invited dozens of organizations with expertise in campus community service and student engagement to nominate colleges for inclusion. Criteria included the college’s admissions practices and scholarships rewarding community service; support for service-learning programs, student activism and student voice in school governance; and level of social engagement of its student body.

The Princeton Review and Campus Compact winnowed a list of 100 schools from a pool of more than 900 colleges. From this shortlist, the editors collected extensive data about schools’ service programs and policies, surveying their students and faculty/staff. The 81 schools chosen for Colleges with a Conscience represent a diverse range of institutions by geographic region, campus size, setting (urban/rural) and type (public/private).

In the U.S. News & World Report 2005 edition of America’s Best Colleges, Bates is ranked 22nd among 217 national liberal arts colleges. The magazine says its rankings are based on a mix of peer assessment, rates of student retention and graduation, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources and alumni giving. Since 1987, with the exception of 1991, Bates’ rank has ranged from 18th to 23rd.

In the “programs to look for” section, Bates continues to be cited among colleges and universities with “undergraduate research/creative projects”, and is now included among institutions with excellent service learning programs. These unranked lists are determined entirely on the number of times the College was nominated by presidents, chief academic officers, and deans of students who responded to the U.S. News reputation survey.

Bates ranks 10th among colleges and universities for the proportion of students who studied abroad (70%), and 19th among liberal arts colleges and national universities with the highest average graduation rates (85%) within four years.

In this year’s Princeton Review “The Best 357 Colleges,” Bates is ranked fifth among 77 schools selected as “America’s Best-Value Colleges.”

“Financial aid awarded at Bates is need-based, and the school does a laudable job meeting the full financial need of its students,” according to the Princeton Review Web site. “Bates has an outside scholarship program you are going to love; students who are awarded non-Bates scholarships are not penalized. In most cases, financial aid grants are not reduced because of outside awards you receive.”

Other Princeton Review ratings of Bates, on a scale of 100:

• Overall Quality of Life: 91
• Academic Rating: 96
• Admissions Selectivity: 97
• Financial Aid: 92

Bates is listed among 433 colleges in Peterson’s Competitive Colleges for 2005, and among the select few colleges in the “Most Competitive” category of Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges.

Bates is included in the 2005 edition of Fiske Guide to Colleges by former New York Times education editor Edward B. Fiske. “Its 4-4-1 calendar offers ample opportunity for study abroad, even for just one month at the year’s end,” the guide says. “The school’s small size also means student/faculty interaction is plentiful, and close friendships are easily formed.”

Bates was one of 320 schools selected for a profile in the Yale Daily News Insider’s Guide to the Colleges 2005.The first-paragraph introduction concludes: “From its ancient Outing Club to its intimate academic opportunities, it is not hard to see why a common senior reflection is, ‘I can’t imagine myself not being part of the immediate Bates community.’”