The Princeton Review Ranks Colleges with Best Career Services

Career services is an integral part of the campus experience—the folks who work there go above and beyond to ensure that their students are career ready. Whether it’s posting internship or job opportunities to an online job board, hosting mock interviews or job fairs, or just sitting down with a student to look over their resume, career services is there to help. In fact, the National Association of Colleges and Employers released a report that approximately 86 percent of the class of 2017 used their campus’ career center during their senior year—that’s a lot of resumes!

The Princeton Review, long-time ranker of schools, recently released their 2020 edition of The Best 385 Colleges (yours truly had a physical copy of its 2009 edition all the way back when I was college-shopping—at 900 pages, it was like a big, beautiful, informative doorstop). The Princeton Review surveyed 140,000 students in their annual survey to come up with their various rankings, including the best college career centers. This list is based on answers to the question “How do you rate your school’s career/job placement services?” Did your school make the top 10?

1. Clemson University (Clemson, SC)

From TPR: Clemson's alumni are “very involved with current operations of the University.” Alumni are also a major contributor to the high job placement rate.

1. University of Richmond (Richmond, VA)

From TPR: Students at the University of Richmond triumphantly declare that the school's Career Services office is “incredibly helpful and thorough.” It's “constantly reaching out to students” and manages to “foster great relationships” with several companies.

1. Bentley University (Waltham, MA)

From TPR: Bentley is an institution that, as one student puts it, “is all about knowing what the business world wants” and “sets out to create the best for its students” as they step into the professional world.

1. Northeastern University (Boston, MA)

From TPR: Typically, students get up to a year-and-a-half of real experience in their fields, which “is a huge advantage when it comes to looking for jobs post-graduation.” 

1. Wabash College (Crawfordsville, IN)

From TPR: The beloved Schroeder Center for Career Development—“if all else fails, Career Services will not fail”—helps students develop leadership and civic experience and provides a variety of tools and workshops for students to avail themselves of (such as cover letter, LinkedIn, and resume guides)…

1. Southwestern University (Georgetown, TX)

From TPR: Many students say that Southwestern's “stellar career services program” helps to distinguish the school. They can turn to the Office of Career Services for help “creat[ing] resumes, apply[ing] to grad school and find[ing] the perfect career.”

1. Elon University (Elon, NC)

From TPR: The campus is packed with “amazing resources, such as the SPDC [Student Professional Development Center], and [the] Maker Hub”…

1. Texas Christian University (Fort Worth, TX)

From TPR: [The career services center] sponsors multiple career fairs throughout the year, each focused on a different discipline (ex. nursing, social work, engineering and technology, etc.) And it hosts a number of networking events wherein students can meet employers from various industries like criminal justice, media and interior design.

1. College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, VA)

From TPR: …[U]ndergrads can turn to the fantastic Cohen Career Center for insight and support. Students have access to top notch services including resume review and mock interviews.

1. St. Lawrence University (Canton, NY)

From TPR: As one impressed undergrad explains, “Sophomore year at St. Lawrence offers a career boot-camp [in which] a very large [number] of students participate. This career boot-camp made sure my resume, LinkedIn [profile] and networking skills were on point.”

The full list of all 20 schools is available here. You can also see if your school made the list in any of the other 61 categories The Princeton Review ranks.

But even if your school didn’t quite make the cut for top 20 career services, don’t fret—your career services center is no doubt chock-full of helpful people who would like nothing more than to help you nail that next internship or job. So be sure to make an appointment when school is back in session—that fall semester is coming up fast, and it’ll go by even faster.