•AVERAGE: 69
Founded in 1855 as New Jersey’s first normal school (the 19th century teacher’s college), the College of New Jersey was built on bringing the most current educational expertise to New Jersey’s young educators. Jump forward to the 21st century, and the College of New Jersey is still dedicated to excellence, innovation, and opportunity. TCNJ’s mission is to provide a place that attracts the highest-achieving students in New Jersey and keep them in New Jersey; as such, it’s one of the most selective institutions in the state, and regularly ranked as New Jersey’s best public university, as well as being recognized by U.S. News & World Report as the top regional college in the North.
Academic Programs
The College of New Jersey is recognized as one of the nation’s best undergraduate educators by the Princeton Review, with particularly high reputation in business (the #1 business school in New Jersey according to Bloomberg Businessweek), engineering, education, and literature. TCNJ’s students are almost exclusively the top 10% of their high school class, an important indicator of future college success, and the retention rate for freshman to sophomore year is far above average (93%) – once students get into The College of New Jersey, they don’t leave. TCNJ has also been noted for the highest four-year graduate rate in the nation.The curriculum of The College of New Jersey is built on the traditions of the liberal arts, giving all students a thorough, well-rounded grounding in the humanities, sciences, and arts; encouraging discussion, debate, and argument; and foregrounding student research in all areas, from the humanities to the hard sciences. And TCNJ is successful across disciplines – 100% of education graduate pass their New Jersey teaching licensure exams; 85% of nursing students pass the RN exam; 64% of pre-med students are accepted into medical school.
Student Life
TCNJ is a mid-sized public university, with around 7400 undergraduate and graduate students, largely residential. The student body is diverse, and intentional initiatives by the university through the Office of Institutional Diversity has made gains in attracting and retaining the most promising minority students in New Jersey. With a student-faculty ratio of 13:1, students get the kind of personalized attention and guidance that they would expect from a small liberal arts college, along with the resources of a public institution.Student life largely revolves around campus (an internal survey found that 80% of students stayed on campus most weekends), aided by a wealth of structured activities, events, and organizations. TCNJ’s location in Trenton places it midway between New York City and Philadelphia, two of the major destinations for employment after graduation. More than 400 employers actively recruit on TCNJ’s campus, competing for some of the most accomplished students in the state.