UC Irvine is one of the nation’s best universities for students seeking great academics, outstanding career preparation and generous financial aid – according to The Princeton Review. The campus placed 42nd out of 200 schools that the education services company profiles in its just-published book Colleges That Pay You Back: The 200 Best Value Colleges & What It Takes to Get In – 2015 Edition. UCI is also featured on The Princeton Review’s site.  The company developed a “return-on-education” rating to winnow colleges for the new book. ROE measures 40 weighted data points – everything from academics, cost, financial aid and student debt to statistics on graduation rates, alumni salaries and job satisfaction. The ROE rating is based on data the company collected in 2013-14 from surveys of administrators and students at 650 colleges, plus surveys of alumni from the same schools conducted by PayScale.com through April 2014. The Princeton Review editors praise UCI for its high-quality education and generous financial aid. “UCI is consistently ranked among the nation’s best universities, with more than 40 top-ranked academic programs,” they say. “As you would expect from a large, well-funded, public research institution, cutting-edge research is the norm here.” The profile also lauds UCI’s career counseling, internships and leadership training programs.