"As the leading national organization for LGBT students and campus groups, Campus Pride is pleased Newsweek relied on our expertise, resources and our nationally acclaimed online LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index (http://www.CampusPrideIndex.org) for its ranking of its "Top 25 Gay Friendly Colleges for 2011," said Shane Windmeyer, Campus Pride executive director/founder. "The Index is a valuable research tool for national benchmarking on LGBT policies, programs and practices. Of course, its free to everyone online -- prospective students, families as well as colleges and universities -- its even accessible for professional news sources like Newsweek."

As stated on the Newsweek's site: To compile the list of the campuses that are the most accepting and open-minded of LGBT students and supporters, we first turned to , a leading metric of how inclusive colleges campuses are of LGBT and Ally people. As well, we considered whether colleges have a LGBT campus center, and College Prowler survey data revealing how students rate the diversity and degree of acceptance for each campus.