A college degree can set you up for success and boost your future earnings, but attending college can be extremely expensive. On average, tuition and room and board at a four-year college costs $28,000 – $60,000 per year.
To determine the top-performing schools at the lowest possible costs to undergraduates, WalletHub compared more than 800 higher-education institutions in the U.S. across 30 key measures. The data set is grouped into seven categories, such as Student Selectivity, Cost & Financing and Career Outcomes. The metrics range from student-faculty ratio to graduation rate to post-attendance median salary.
Recognizing the challenge of predicting future outcomes, WalletHub’s Best Colleges ranking also analyzes post-attendance metrics — the student-loan default rate and the share of former students outearning high school graduates, for instance — to show the value of the education students can expect to receive beyond their undergraduate studies.
- Princeton University
- Yale University
- Harvard University
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Dartmouth College
- Swarthmore College
- Hamilton College
- Amherst College
- Wellesley College
- Harvey Mudd College
