Middle Tennessee State University was selected as one of the “Best in the Southeast” by The Princeton Review on its 2014 list of the nation’s top colleges.

Editors of the annual list, which recognized 138 institutions in the 12-state southeast region, called MTSU “a growing school on the rise,” where “you get a quality education and you aren’t in crippling debt afterward.”

The Review, an education services company known for test prep programs and college guides, said MTSU’s faculty “work hard to ensure equal opportunities for students who want to learn” and “the administration’s ear is easily bent, meaning resources continue to improve every year.”

You can read more about MTSU and the other institutions selected for recognition at www.princetonreview.com/best-regional-colleges.aspx.

“We are pleased that our devotion to student success continues to attract the attention of The Princeton Review,” said MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee. “We work every day to provide an excellent campus environment and a community devoted to learning, growth and service.

“That’s what we mean when we say, ‘I am True Blue.’ ”

Dr. Sidney A. McPhee

The 138 colleges selected for the Review’s “Best in the Southeast” designations are located in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

The Review designated 226 colleges in the Northeast, 124 in the West, and 155 in the Midwest as best in their locales on its “2014 Best Colleges: Region by Region” lists. The 643 colleges named “regional best(s)” represent about 25 percent of the nation’s 2,500 four-year colleges.

“We’re pleased to recommend these colleges to users of our site as the best schools to earn their undergrad degrees,” said Robert Franek, the Review’s senior vice president and publisher. “We chose these as our ‘regional best’ colleges mainly for their excellent academic programs.”

For this project, the Review asked students attending the schools to rate their own schools on several issues — from accessibility of their professors to quality of the campus food — and answer questions about themselves, their fellow students and their campus life.

Comments from surveyed students are quoted in the school profiles on the Review’s site. The profiles also have a “Survey Says” list that reveals topics about which students surveyed at the school were in highest agreement.

“From several hundred schools in each region, we winnowed our list based on institutional data we collected directly from the schools, our visits to schools over the years, and the opinions of our staff, plus college counselors and advisors whose recommendations we invite,” Franek said.

MTSU also was recently identified by another online resource, AffordableCollegeOnline.org, as one of the state’s college and universities with the greatest lifetime return on investment. The site listed MTSU as a “High ROI College,” saying it offers a “high-quality education with consistent, long-term payoffs in the workplace.”

— Andrew Oppmann (Andrew.Oppmann@mtsu.edu)