Georgetown flexed its athletic muscle in a national survey by en’s Fitness magazine recently, weighing in as the 16th fittest college in the nation.

The Princeton Review worked with the magazine to survey more than 10,000 students from over 660 colleges and universities across the country about the interests and habits of college students. The survey asked students 18 health-related questions and averaged the answers to create a letter grade, or “GPA,” correlated to each school’s level of fitness.

“Looking fit and healthy is a life skill,” Carol Day, director of Health Education Services, said. “Students are sophisticated and used to having lots of options at home. The more we can do to round that out with providing more produce, specialty nights, more vegetarian entrees – these are all good trends, and each year they try to improve dining hall services based on what students request of them.”

The magazine’s questions were grouped into five categories, including campus attitudes toward fitness, frequency and intensity of physical activity, weekly consumption of alcohol and fast food, physical body characteristics and lifestyle choices, such as the amount of sleep an individual gets on a nightly basis.

“I think we owe our rating to discipline among the student body, the fact that D.C. is a running-friendly city with many paths and routes, and the fact that Yates offers so many different classes and outdoor education programs,” Erin Seaboyer (COL ’08) said. “I run or go to Yates pretty much every day, and even though I see a lot of the same people, there’s always someone I don’t remember seeing before.”

Day said that students come to Georgetown already very accomplished in extracurricular and academic areas, and the ranking may indicate that the university attracts a student population “above average in all ways.”

She said Georgetown’s Jesuit education emphasizes a “well-rounded” lifestyle that includes physical fitness.

Students seem to encourage one another to engage in individual exercise programs and to join intramural or club sports, Day said.

“When I was working at Yates last year people were always coming to the gym, even at 6:30 in the morning,” Rachel Abrahams (COL ’08) said. “It was always extremely crowded.”

Abrahams said that participation in team sports is also very popular for Georgetown students.

“Turf space at Kehoe is really hard to come by because of the plethora of club teams,” she said. “Some people have to practice from 10 to 11 at night.”

Day also said that there are negative factors that could contribute to the ranking, such as peer pressure to maintain one’s physical appearance and the eating disorders that can arise as a result. She added, however, that exercise can also be a way to manage stress properly.

Brigham Young University took first place in the survey, while the University of Louisiana, Lafayette ranked number one in the survey’s Top Fattest Colleges category.