I think it would be good to have a Best Value Full Price Out of State as well
Some prominent research universities that take a big hit in Money’s ranking:
52 Columbia, #64 Cornell, #70 Northwestern, #81 Johns Hopkins, #83 Chicago, #84 Georgetown, #87 WUSTL, #89 Tufts, #99 U Rochester, #147 Emory, #150 Boston College, #155 USC, #169 Carnegie Mellon, #173 Case Western, #220 Penn State, #243 Brandeis, #268 RPI, #306 NYU, #462 Boston University, #691 Tulane, #642 Alabama
And some prominent LACs that take a big hit:
65 Vassar, #68 Wesleyan, #71 Claremont McKenna, #75 Colby, #79 Harvey Mudd, #100 Swarthmore, #144 Barnard, #146 Mount Holyoke, #156 Grinnell, #159 Colorado College, #215 Macalester, #216 Carleton, #250 Haverford, #265 Oberlin, #268 Smith, #392 Bryn Mawr, #404 Scripps
Well, at least they don’t slavishly follow the US News ranking. You’ve got to give them credit for that much.
I’d like to like this list, since my alma mater’s no. 2, lol. But really, it is ridiculous.
Woohoo! Top 5. One of the best lists I’ve seen. haha They certainly rank many of the UCs different relative to each other than the majority of applicants and other rankings.
With any one list you can find a bunch of schools that you think they got really wrong. But look at about 5-6 of the well known rankings and the relative placement becomes a little clearer.
My son is taking his #642 best value diploma all the way to the bank. His starting salary is more than the entire 4 year cost.
@Chardo Wow, that ranking isn’t in line with any other ones that I’ve seen. Not even close. Behind University of Saint-Francis-Fort Wayne. Ouch! 
Well, both of my kids schools are in the top 20 on their list. Just another list. We did not get a dime from either school but they did get good educations.
But even with the ‘value of education’ at 33%, the points that make up that score can be manipulated by the schools. BYU has great numbers for graduation rates, yield rate, faculty:student ration, so does well in this ranking.
@twoinanddone Quality of Education, you mean?
For many strong students, the single most important factor in choosing a college is academic quality.
The Money ranking, unlike the USNWR or Forbes rankings, has no factors for academic quality, per se.
Money has nothing comparable to the USNWR peer assessment scores, which presumably reflect the quality of research (and possibly instruction). Money’s “outcomes” criteria focus on job placement and earnings but don’t measure academic success (as Forbes does by tracking scholarships, fellowships, and earned doctorates).
A college could keep costs low and the graduation rates high by paying low salaries to poorly qualified faculty who don’t challenge their students. A college with a high Money ranking could have robust career counseling services, yet invest little in academic facilities (libraries, labs), have relatively few full-time faculty, or have a relatively low percentage of faculty with terminal degrees in their fields.
Even with respect to affordability, the Money rankings won’t ring equally true for all families. #19 UMCP may be more affordable than #81 JHU for upper middle income Maryland residents; #22 UIUC may be more affordable than #56 UChicago for upper middle income Illinois residents. However, Maryland or Illinois are likely to net out much higher than JHU or Chicago for the majority of families from other states (unless their incomes are too high for need-based aid).
Where I live, the strong students would love to pick a school only on academic quality but then reality hits and then the vast majority end up at the state school because their families are not receiving any need-based aid. I like this poll because it does look at what you spend and the results based on earnings. This list is not labeled best education but best value.
Any time you take into account costs (across the board), you create a ranking that won’t apply to everyone. A given school can give 99% of its student aid, but if you are in the 1% the scholarships others get do not matter to you (in terms of value). And if 5% of a student population gets aid but you get it, how much does it matter to you (in terms of value) that the vast majority of the kids did not get aid?
And value really messes with public rankings. UCB is a great deal in state, but what about OOS? And UNH might be inexpensive for full payers, both IS and OOS, but even the most high achieving low income NH residents probably can’t afford it.
Sure. But they don’t wind up at just any state school, they wind up at a state school in their own state. So why have a national ranking based 1/3 on affordability, if at that point there may be one obvious affordable-and-good choice (your own state flagship)? Of course, academic quality can be somewhat idiosyncratic, too, but at least among the top-ranked colleges, quality is unlikely to vary among departments to the degree net price does from student to student.
Pick 3-5 colleges at random from the US News “national” top 20, and you have a plausible set of “reach” schools for a random high-stats, middle class, liberal arts student. Pick 3-5 at random from the Money top 20, and you are likely to get a fairly odd combination.
Or put another way, the USN national top 20 (or 30, whatever) all “hang together.” They are the same thing, in different flavors. Not so the Money list.
That final qualifier—“unless their incomes are too high for need-based aid”—pretty much swallows up your principal claim. At JHU only 46.5% of undergraduates receive need-based aid. A majority, 53.5%, are full-pays, presumably because their family incomes are too high for need-based aid. Thus a clear majority of students attending JHU would find it cheaper to attend UMCP (annual tuition $31,144 OOS, $9,996 in-state) than JHU (annual tuition $48,710) regardless of their state of residence. For that matter, any non-Marylander attending JHU and receiving less than $17,566 in grant aid would find UMCP cheaper. A Maryland resident would need to receive at least $38,714 in grant aid from JHU to make it cost-competitive with UMCP. And by “grant aid” I mean grants from institutional funds, not Pell grants or third-party grants and scholarships which are generally portable and could be used at either institution. All told, it’s a fair bet that somewhere around 2/3 of JHU students would find UMCP cheaper, assuming not even a nickel of institutional need-based or merit aid from UMCP.
UMCP also hands out about $24 million annually in merit awards,(as opposed to less than $3 million at JHU) which probably moves the affordability needle even more in UMCP’s favor. The students for whom affordability tilts most clearly in favor of JHU are those at lower income levels, with EFCs low enough to qualify for need-based aid at both schools. JHU meets full need, and 87% of its need-based aid is grant aid. UMCP meets on average only 75% of need, and nearly half (47%) of the need-based aid it does give is in the form of self-help awards, either loans, work-study, or both. Self-help is a form of “you pay”—you just pay later (via loans) or in sweat (via work-study). But these students are a minority at schools like JHU, which tend to draw their students disproportionately from more affluent quarters.
True, if by “lower income levels” we mean incomes as high as 2x - 4x the national median (depending on state residency and other factors).
A family earning $130K/year (w/ $65K in cash/savings/checking, no home equity, and only1 child) would get $39,850 in grant aid from JHU, according to my estimate using the College Board net price calculator.
Even a family earning $200K/year (w/ $100K in cash/savings/checking, no home equity, and only1 child) would get $19,950 in grant aid from JHU, according to my estimate using the same College Board net price calculator. Compare these numbers to the $38,714 and $17,566 tipping points mentioned in post #35.
About 85-90% of all American families earn less than $130K (http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2011/10/the-one-percent). Almost 96% earn less than $200K. The fact that over 50% of students are full-pays at JHU (and other elite colleges), and thus apparently earn over $200K/year in most cases, presumably reflects the great advantages wealthy families have in competing for college admissions.
How does one measure admissions selectivity? Admission rates?
Actually, home equity is one of the big issues. Most families making the $130 or up do have significant home equity. It is probably one of their largest assets. They can be cash poor but do have equity. That is a plus for FAFSA schools and a hit for CSS schools. If you are in your 50’s, like myself, you don’t want to refinance the home and start all over again. You are looking towards retirement and reducing debt. Again, a plus for the state schools.
^ If I add $130K in home equity to my JHU estimate for a family making $130K/year, the estimated grant aid drops to $34,050. Yes, that’s now below bclintonk’s tipping point ($38,714) for a MD resident comparing JHU to UMCP. If I also add in a 14 year old sibling, the estimated grant aid goes up to $37,950 (still a little below that tipping point). But that’s just for JHU. For the same scenario ($130K income, $65K cash savings, $130K home equity, a 14 year old sibling), here’s the estimated grant aid for a few other “full need” schools, and (for comparison) a few OOS public universities:
$43,514 Swarthmore ($22,646 net)
$42,004 MIT ($23,474 net)
$40,100 UChicago ($28,842 net)
$39,621 Haverford ($27,257 net)
$21,226 UVa ($37,216 net)
$7500 Pittsburgh
$0 Indiana-Bloomington
According to the UMCP net price calculator, in this scenario a student would not receive any need-based aid. The estimated price for a Maryland resident to attend and live on campus is $24,428.