WINONA, Minn. – Winona State heralded in a press release that it has been listed for the 21st consecutive year among the “Best in the Midwest” by Princeton Review. The Review listed 150 colleges in the region, also including Saint Mary’s, without ranking them. So was Winona State first or the 150th? The same question about Saint Mary’s. To prospective students, Princeton Review said it considers all 150 listed colleges “academically outstanding and well worth consideration.” There was a time when Princeton Review ranked colleges, but the company’s methodology came into disrepute for encouraging unwarranted inferences about any statistical precision. The Review, which has no connection with the prestigious Ivy League Princeton University, now lists the colleges alphabetically and unranked. Prospective students are encouraged to peruse each and every college for one that seems a good personal fit. In effect, Princeton Review has reinvented itself not as a ranking service but only as an aggregator of institutional data, much of it provided by the colleges themselves. Random student comments are included but with no pretense of being statistically representative. For prospective students, the Review is a useful assemblage of information — all in one place — to sort through. As a for-profit company, Princeton Review sells tutoring services to students to help boost their college admission exam scores.

Corporate profile

Princeton Review was founded in 1981 by recent Princeton graduate John Katsman as a tutoring service for college-aspiring sudents.

2012: Acquired by a private equity company, Charlesbank Capital, for $33 million

2014: Acquired by Tutor.com, an IAC subsidiary, for an undisclosed sum.

2023: Tutor.com and Princeton Review were acquired by a Chinese investment group, Primavera Capital, the largest private equity firm in Asia.

Over the years Princeton Review also has had many other corporate parents. Among assets folded into the Princeton Review portfolio over the years were 150 print and digital books acquired from Penguin Random House.