Newsweek Names Pacific Union College Most Beautiful; Southern Among Most Conservative

A Newsweek/Daily Beast ranking of “Best Colleges for You” places Pacific Union College atop the list of most beautiful colleges in the United States. According to an explanatory video posted online, colleges were ranked based on “the grand triumvirate” of beautiful things: students, weather and campuses. The Angwin, California liberal arts college topped Bucknell University, Point Loma Nazarene University, Chapman University, and Santa Clara University.

Rankings also included Best Party School, Happiest School, Most and Least Rigorous, Most Liberal and Most Conservative Schools.

Below, Newsweek’s social media editor, Brian Ries, provides a rundown of the top-ranked schools. List of most beautiful schools begins at approximately 1:40 in the video.

Jesse Wegman and Lauren Streib discuss the most expensive, rigorous, and most beautiful colleges of 2012. Discussion of most beautiful schools begins at approximately 1:15 in the video.

Southern Adventist University in Collegedale Tennessee was ranked 14th out of the top 25 most conservative schools in the United States. Southern ranked higher in conservatism than Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty University (which announced this week that it would be opening a 2nd Chick-fil-A restaurant on its campus). The ranking was based on percentage of students describing their campus as “very conservative” (27 percent), “conservative” (53 percent) and students’ description of political diversity on campus (5.2 out of 10 points). See methodology here.