Bang for your Buck! The Top Schools do it pretty well.

College Search & Selection
1

<p>In the search for colleges that offer the best combinations of top-ranked colleges and colleges most generous with their need-based financial aid, the winners among national universities are...the top ranked colleges. This is not much of a surprise as these colleges tend to have the most money and thus can be the most generous. Among the USNWR Top 30 national universities, only UCLA and U Michigan failed to make the Top 50 list for Best Values. Kudos to U North Carolina which places at # 9. </p>

<p>Here is the whole list as well as the methodology that USNWR used and the individual pieces of data used to calculate the rankings:</p>

<p>Best Values according to 2008 USNWR Methodology: </p>

<p>60% , Ratio of quality to price. Overall 2008 Best Colleges score divided by net cost to atttend. The higher the ratio the better. </p>

<p>25% , % of all undergrads receiving need-based grants in 2006-07 </p>

<p>15% , Average discount and shown as % of school's bill for total costs that are covered (uses OOS cost for publics) </p>

<p>Best Value Rank , % Receiving Need-based Grants , Avg Cost after grants , Average Discount , College</p>

<p>1 , 49% , $15,647 , 66% , Harvard
2 , 52% , $16,741 , 63% , Princeton
3 , 42% , $16,295 , 65% , Yale
4 , 53% , $16,926 , 60% , Caltech
5 , 67% , $19,677 , 58% , MIT
6 , 43% , $18,986 , 59% , Stanford
7 , 50% , $18,820 , 60% , Dartmouth
8 , 46% , $19,412 , 59% , Columbia
9 , 34% , $14,954 , 50% , U North Carolina
10 , 38% , $20,888 , 55% , Duke
11 , 39% , $19,667 , 58% , Vanderbilt
12 , 45% , $22,792 , 52% , U Chicago
13 , 36% , $18,819 , 47% , Rice
14 , 41% , $23,188 , 51% , U Penn
15 , 42% , $23,129 , 50% , Brown
16 , 23% , $17,834 , 50% , U Virginia
17 , 37% , $21,793 , 51% , Emory
18 , 42% , $24,670 , 48% , Wash U
19 , 40% , $24,700 , 46% , Cornell
20 , 45% , $23,596 , 47% , Notre Dame
21 , 40% , $24,894 , 47% , Northwestern
22 , 60% , $22,517 , 48% , Case Western
23 , 32% , $14,628 , 43% , Texas A&M
24 , 67% , $24,864 , 45% , Rensselaer
25 , 40% , $27,659 , 41% , Johns Hopkins
26 , 28% , $11,616 , 17% , BYU
27 , 43% , $22,906 , 49% , Lehigh
28 , 54% , $24,334 , 47% , U Rochester
29 , 35% , $23,020 , 51% , Tufts
30 , 46% , $27,065 , 39% , Carnegie Mellon
31 , 46% , $24,555 , 46% , Brandeis
32 , 42% , $15,546 , 42% , NC State
33 , 80% , $19,979 , 17% , SUNY-EnviSci
34 , 38% , $25,813 , 45% , USC
35 , 44% , $21,557 , 52% , Pepperdine
36 , 57% , $19,951 , 49% , Clark
37 , 47% , $20,198 , 39% , U Pittsburgh
38 , 36% , $27,279 , 44% , Georgetown
39 , 37% , $14,686 , 37% , Howard
40 , 55% , $23,642 , 27% , U Texas
41 , 34% , $25,118 , 43% , Wake Forest
42 , 63% , $22,684 , 44% , U Pacific
43 , 36% , $25,294 , 46% , Boston College
44 , 44% , $23,710 , 44% , Yehsiva
45 , 67% , $29,106 , 36% , Worcester
46 , 49% , $25,739 , 42% , U Miami
47 , 52% , $26,648 , 38% , Syracuse
48 , 37% , $23,983 , 47% , Tulane
49 , 32% , $29,093 , 32% , UC Berkeley
50 , 65% , $25,378 , 35% , Loyola</p>

2

<p>How do the rankings change if you use in-state tuition costs for the publics?</p>

3

<p>Leave it to hawkette to find the one list where Michigan isn't rated in the top 30 of something.</p>

4

<p>What I can't figure out is why Vanderbilt (11) is not ahead of Duke (10), given that Vanderbilt has a better score on all three measures than Duke. </p>

<p>Is it just because the world will stop turning if Vanderbilt beats Duke on one of these rankings?</p>

5

<p>No, it's because this is a best value list, which takes into account college's quality as well as its cost. USNWR ranks Duke higher (8 v. 19, scores of 92 v. 79), so in their mind the extra quality from Duke is worth the extra cost.</p>

6

<p>The University of California campuses are in general about $21,500 including room and board for in state residents.</p>

<p>the reason UC's don't show well on this list is that they don't feel a resposibility to use taxpayer dollars to subsidize out of state students. Yes, they are still subsidized, as the UC Berkeley out of state tuition + fees + room/board is about $38,000, vs. $48,000 at most privates.</p>

7

<p>DCforMe, </p>

<p>Ah, I see, it's that "quality" thing. I understand the reasoning, but I don't see where you found the scores of 92 v. 79. (It doesn't really matter, my comment was meant to be humorous.)</p>

<p>On a more serious note, the "best value" for individual students often bears little, if any, resemblance to institutional best values as reflected in lists like this. I suppose they are a good starting point if a prospective student is wondering if, in general, a school tends to offer financial assistance to those with qualifying FAFSA and Profile scores.</p>

<p>In the end, though, those students who are in the running for merit awards would do well to keep in mind that this list ignores non-need based financial awards.</p>

8

<p>ucbchemegrad,
It's a legitmate question about using the IS costs for the publics. Unfortunately, USNWR does not do the calculation. I suspect that most of the top publics would vault pretty high in the rankings as the price differential can be huge (even if the privates more actively and broadly give out aid).</p>

<p>rjfofnovi,
I didn't make up the rankings. USNWR did. I don't set U Michigan's OOS rates for cost of attendance (highest among all publics ranked in the top 50). Take it up with them. </p>

<p>midmo,
After USNWR does all of their calculations, they rescale their results to a 100-point scale and come up with their rankings. In the 2008 rankings, Duke was 8th among national universities and their score was 92 points. Vanderbilt was 19th and their score was 79 points. </p>

<p>Here is a link to the USNWR methodology for "Best Values"</p>

<p>America's</a> Best Colleges 2008: Methodology: Best Values -- U.S.News & World Report</p>

<p>I very much agree with your points that such a list is best used as a starting point. And as you point out, many top students will be in the running for merit awards and the net cost after such awards is much lower and vary significantly from college to college and even student to student.</p>

9

<p>^ Ah, OK thanks, Hawkette...I misunderstood and thought you used some other data to make a new ranking.</p>

10

<p>Another way of comparing the highly ranked national universities is to consider how much debt the average student will incur by the time of graduation. USNWR also provides these numbers which they call Student Indebtedness. </p>

<p>The data include loans taken out by students from the colleges themselves, from financial institutions, and from federal, state, and local governments. Parents' loans are not included. The second number entered for a college, labeled "Average amount of debt," is the average cumulative amount borrowed by those students who incurred debt, not the average for all students. The first number indicates what percentage of the student body has taken on debt and, by extrapolation, what percentage is debt free.</p>

<p>Again, the most well endowed colleges are at the very top of the list. In a change from the Best Values List, the publics generally compare much more favorably on this measure. Below are the numbers for the USNWR Top 30 ranked national universities (this is how they compare to one another on student indebtedness, not how they rank nationally in this measurement). </p>

<p>% of grads with debt , Avg amount of debt , College</p>

<p>26% , $4,965 , Princeton
34% , $5,156 , Caltech
42% , $9,717 , Harvard
32% , $13,344 , Yale
36% , $14,200 , Tufts
32% , $14,487 , U North Carolina
44% , $14,751 , UC Berkeley
46% , $15,758 , Stanford
41% , $15,876 , Rice
46% , $15,996 , UCLA
33% , $16,903 , U Virginia
53% , $16,932 , Johns Hopkins
50% , $17,007 , Brown
44% , $17,275 , Columbia
45% , $17,956 , MIT
54% , $18,257 , USC
46% , $18,860 , Northwestern
38% , $19,429 , Vanderbilt
37% , $20,655 , Wake Forest
41% , $20,927 , U Penn
52% , $21,561 , Dartmouth
40% , $23,499 , Duke
44% , $23,533 , U Michigan
39% , $24,272 , Emory
46% , $24,816 , Georgetown
55% , $24,928 , Cornell
57% , $26,285 , Notre Dame
na , na , U Chicago
na , na , Wash U</p>

11

<p>you should remember that some cornell students have the reduced NYS tuition</p>

12

<p>Remember that debt reflects not just cost, but also affluence. Parents at Princeton (7% Pell Grant recipients) are likely to be able to pay out of pocket than those at UCLA (38% Pell Grants), so there will be no need to incur debt.</p>

13

<p>Of course, these lists may be shaken up a bit with the new aid programs several schools adopted this year, which won't show up in US News for another year or two.</p>