IC Featured in Fiske Guide to Colleges

By Dave Maley, July 11, 2023

Publication cites Ithaca College's special approach to hands-on learning.

Ithaca College is featured in the latest edition of the Fiske Guide to Colleges, a bestselling compendium of the top 300-plus institutions throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Now in its 40th year, the Fiske Guide highlights the “best and most interesting” colleges and universities.

In its description of Ithaca College, the guide notes that IC offers “an unusually wide array of programs for a smallish university,” and that it “has led the way in showing how to combine hands-on preprofessional training in a wide range of fields, from communications and theatre to health sciences, with a solid grounding in the liberal arts.”

Compiled by former longtime New York Times education editor Edward B. Fiske, the guide serves as an authoritative source for college-bound students and their families and is the one that high school counselors recommend most often to them. The guide’s selection process is based on questionnaires completed by current students and administrators, campus visits, and additional research conducted by the editorial staff.

Ithaca College “has led the way in showing how to combine hands-on preprofessional training in a wide range of fields, from communications and theatre to health sciences, with a solid grounding in the liberal arts.”

2024 Fiske Guide to Colleges

The 2024 edition includes a profile for Ithaca College with various facts, statistics, and demographic information that also highlights its academic programs, experiential learning opportunities, athletics, extracurricular activities, and the spectacular location that makes Ithaca one of the best college towns in the country.

The publication says that campus facilities afford students access to more than 100 labs, smart classrooms, studios, practice rooms, and performance spaces, while the college’s size “continues to allow for easy friendships with peers and professors alike,” and that its “special approach to hands-on learning helps prepare students for life outside institutional walls.”

One IC student is quoted as saying, “The teaching approach here is discussion-based and hands-on. Students don’t learn from simply reading and listening, we learn from applying course material,” while another notes that, “Everybody who is part of the Ithaca College community knows that they are part of something special. At other schools, you’re a number. At Ithaca, we know your name.”