"Attending a good school in the U.S. comes at a price.
Since 1985, college tuition has risen by roughly 500%, vastly outpacing almost all other increases in the cost of living. Today, there are more than 4,000 colleges in the country, ranging from high-flying Ivy League institutions to more modest, practical schools.
This infographic from TitleMax shows the top 100 colleges in America based on the U.S. News Best National Universities list, ranked by tuition from highest to lowest." …
List price is completely irrelevant. What matters is my child’s cost of attendance. That will vary for every individual based on merit and need-based aid. When our older child received offers some of the highest list price schools had the lowest costs to us.
Yet another waste of an opportunity to do the public a service by including those three little words, Net Price Calculator, something too few families are aware exist. Yet another author who doesn’t actually know their stuff. (Sorry, major pet peeve.)
CIrcle graph is horrendous. Sorry to disagree, but that graphic is the opposite of excellent; it is visually nauseating.
Wow, they seem to be going out of their way to make it hard to read.
Net Price is specific to every individual, so there’s really no way to show that. That means that this is about as useful as the USNews “overall ranking” of schools - interesting in abstract but not really relevant as you need to select by major (ranking)/family financial situation (cost).
They could have at least done it by total cost of attendance.
I’m pretty sure Ivy League wasn’t called out due to their sporting prowess.
I am pleased to see that my kids have legacy at schools that are among the most expensive in the world – one of which does not consider legacy status for admissions.
I do not see this as a particularly useful article other than to feel glad that my spouse and I got our degrees back when the prices were not so high.
The highest 2019-20 in-district tuition 4-year colleges, as listed in IPEDS are below. There are quite a lot of LACs and others missing from the list in the OP. As has been touched on, many of these colleges offer excellent FA,. In some cases, the majority of families claim FA., including families making $>200k. This can make the tuition list below more of a list of the maximum cost for wealthy families, rather than what typical families pay.
Landmark College -- $59.1k
Columbia -- $58.9k
Franklin & Marshall -- $58.6k
Harvey Mudd -- $58.4k
Reed College -- $58.1k
Vassar College -- $57.9k
Bucknell College -- $57.9k
Colgate College -- $57.7k
Chicago -- $56.6k
Amherst -- $56.6k.
The lowest tuition colleges are all $0 and include Curtis, USMMA, Haskall Indian Nations, and University of the People.
Small private schools cost more than large public schools? I had no idea.
And it says right there…”What it Costs to Go To America’s 100 Highest- Rated Universities”. I keep hearing that the most expensive schools now cost around $80K per year to attend, but this is telling me it’s not so bad…only one is over $60K! That difference must be the impact of financial aid and scholarships, since it would make absolutely no sense, and in fact be misleading to the point of being useless, to not consider those factors. Of course, I’m assuming that cost is per year since it never actually specifies whether these are annual costs. If that’s the case, it sure would be helpful to know on average how many years it takes to graduate from each of these schools since I don’t believe many students are only going for one year and there could be material differences.
Also wondering what factors they used to “rank” them, because it looks suspiciously like they simply put them in a list of descending order, but that’s a complicated looking picture, so I’m sure there are complicated calculations behind their rankings!
Gosh, this picture has generated so many questions for me, in addition to allowing me to get out and polish my magnifying glass! I feel better informed and equipped with valuable information for my college search. Anxiously awaiting the Non-National Universities version.
LOL…Im sorry, apparently my intended excessive sarcasm wasn’t excessive enough, but you nonetheless helped to illustrate my point.
I am very aware of this as I have a child in one of, according to this graphic, the most expensive schools and was attempting to highlight the deficiencies with it.
A list for total cost for 2019 in-district students living on campus is below. I believe the list linked linked form the original post was using tuition + fees.
Chicago -- $82 total cost, $61 tuition + fees, 58k tuition
Columbia -- $80k total cost, $62k tuition + fees, $59k tuition
