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Money Ranks the Best Colleges in America for Your Money

New Analysis Finds Babson College in Massachusetts Is Best Value Education in The Country; MIT, Princeton and Harvard in Top 5

Jul 28, 2014

NEW YORK, July 28, 2014 – Today, Money reveals its list of Money’s Best Colleges, a new approach to ranking colleges that uses unique measures of educational quality, affordability, and career outcomes to help families find the right school at the right price.

 

Nine months in the making, Money’s Best Colleges ranks 665 schools on 17 measures, based on the most recent research about what really matters in higher education. Among its distinctive analyses: The list provides a more realistic way to price colleges, taking into account the complete cost of a degree rather than a single year. It is also the only ranking to evaluate which schools add the most value given the academic and economic background of the students who attend, and to level the playing field on majors, to show whether graduates of a particular college earn more (or less) than average, whether they got degrees in engineering or English. The result, says Money senior writer Kim Clark, who created the rankings and wrote the accompanying story, “is a list of colleges – some famous, some surprising – that, according to the best data available, provide real value. College is expensive, but the highly rated colleges on our list are the most likely to do a great job of educating your student and helping to launch him or her into a well-paying job.”[/p]

To develop the new rankings, Money partnered with Mark Schneider, former commissioner of the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics and his company College Measures, which collects and analyzes data to drive improvements in higher ed. Major contributions also came from Payscale.com, which provided the earnings data. One of the most important findings to come out of the rankings, Schneider notes, is that you don’t have to pay a lot to get a high quality education that really helps in the job market. “The published price of a college doesn’t tell you very much about what you’ll actually pay or of students’ later life success,” he says. “There is zero correlation with most of our measures.”

See the full ranking of 665 schools and sort by location, size of school and more here.
#bestcolleges

Money’s Top 10 Best Colleges:

1. Babson College – Babson Park, Mass.

2. Webb Institute – Glen Cove, N.Y.

3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Cambridge, Mass.

4. Princeton University – Princeton, N.J.

5. Stanford University – Stanford, Calif.

6. Harvard University – Cambridge, Mass.

7. Harvey Mudd College – Claremont, Calif.

8. Cooper Union – New York City, N.Y.

9. Brigham Young University – Provo – Provo, Utah

10. California Institute of Technology – Pasadena, Calif.

More on Money.com:

Top 50 Colleges At a Glance
Best Public Colleges
Best Private Colleges
Best Liberal Arts Colleges
25 Most Affordable Private Colleges

25 Colleges That Add the Most Value

25 Best Colleges That You Can Actually Get Into
 

More Highlights from Money’s Best Colleges Lists:

-The state with the most top-50 schools: California, with nine, followed by Massachusetts (7), and New York (6); some 22 states have at least one school ranked in the top 50
-The most expensive college in the top 50 is Columbia University (estimated average net price of a degree: $206,800)
-The least expensive school in the top 50 is Principia College in Illinois, with an estimated average net price of a degree of just $65,500

-The most affordable college overall: Berea in Kentucky, ranked 57th but No. 1 in affordability, with a net price of a degree of just $49,300
-The most affordable Ivy League school: Princeton
-The best liberal arts college: overall, the winner is Harvey Mudd; among traditional colleges, it’s Williams, followed by Amherst
-The schools that add the most value: Mount St. Mary’s, University of California at Irvine and Art Center College of Design, all in California
-Higher-cost colleges do not graduate a higher percentage of students than similar but lower-priced colleges, nor do their alumni earn more
-No matter which college you attend, majoring in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) is likely to result in a bigger salary down the road

METHODOLOGY:

To make our initial cut, a college had to have a six-year graduation rate at or above the median in its category (public or private). We then screened out schools with a speculative bond rating from Moody’s (indicating financial difficulties) or for which there weren’t sufficient data available. That left 665 schools, which we ranked on 17 factors in three equally weighted categories:

Quality of Education – Factors included the school’s six-year graduation rate, student standardized test scores, the student-faculty ratio, and Rate My Professors grades, in addition to the value-added graduation rate, which reflects the difference between a school’s actual grad rate and its expected rate, based on the economic and academic background of the student body.

Affordability – Measures included student and parent borrowing and student-loan default rates (unadjusted and value added), as well as the estimated average net price of a degree, a calculation that takes into account a school’s sticker price, total institutional financial aid, ¬tuition inflation, and the average time it takes students to graduate.

Outcomes – This category includes several measures of early (within five years of graduation) and mid-career earnings (raw data from Payscale.com, plus adjustments for value added and the school’s majors), plus career services staffing.

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The August issue of Money goes on sale Friday, August 1.

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