As a senior in high school, your one job is to choose the “right” college, in other words, the cheapest and closest if your parents are like most. My parents immediately bought me a couple of college guides including the Princeton Review’s Best 368 Schools and it had some pretty informative stuff in it—like tuition costs, most popular majors, and average high school GPA’s--but it didn’t tell me the juicy stuff that may make or break a college experience.

In the case of JMU, I got lucky going here without getting all my facts because it seems our stats are pretty good.

Besides being ranked one of the Best Southeastern Colleges (even though I’m not sure what our competition is besides UNC, Wake Forest, and a couple of others), we’re also ranked 5th for best campus food.

I don’t know about you, but I eat my feelings. Especially when I’m stressed, missing home, excited, nervous, and basically feeling anything at all. One of my biggest fears coming into college was having one dining hall with gross food. But thank you, JMU, for having the 5th best campus food. Yeah I miss home cooking when I’m at school, but I miss campus food even more when I’m at home.

JMU was also ranked as a “College with a Conscience”—Yay! I’m not sure how they decided this one (hopefully not by inserting Princeton Reviewers into parties to hook-up with girls and see how they felt the next day), but having an angel on one shoulder is always good to balance out the devil on the other.

Last, and possibly most important for JMU student's empty pockets and decreasing memory capacities, we are known for having Lots of Beer--18th in the country actually. You can view this as a good thing or a bad thing—either way, it’s a fact.

Hopefully, college guides have started inserting these tid bits into their guides more often now because what's more important: how many Asian-Americans go to your school or whether or not you're going to starve yourself and live off of only beer because of the horrible campus food? I think you know the answer to that one.