My graduate definitely agrees, as do we, so I’ll second your post.
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University of Oregon! Pretty campus, fantastic professors, nationally strong in some departments (eg. geology and journalism), overall happy students, revamped honors program.
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Chico State. Nobody in my family attended, but I used to live about an hour away and some of us would go there and crash parties. It had a well-deserved reputation as a party school. Chico was a great town, full of cowboys and college students, and the school is like an oasis in the middle of a bunch of rice fields. Yale and Chico State are my two favorite campuses. I’ve worked with multiple computer science graduates from there, and their CS program seems pretty good.
Ohio University. I grew up in Columbus and loved going down to Athens. The campus is very pretty, Athens is the quintessential college town, and again, very good parties.
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This illistrates the issues that arises with generic “Txx” labels.
Purdue isn’t in the USNews top 50 which, for better or worse, is what many use as a “definitive” ranking. But I’d put their engineering program up against almost any. A recent seminar by a college consultant noted the same for their CS program, as an example for the “look at the major, not the university, there are very good programs in schools that don’t first come to mind” advice.
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Trinity University in TX is a great school that you don’t hear much about.
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Ft Lewis in Durango Co. Its part of the CO state system, just 3500 students, they participate in WUE so its relatively affordable to residents of WUE states, has a beautiful campus with stunning views in all directions. Great for mountain bikers and outdoor enthusiasts.
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Viterbo in Wisconsin. I love how service and community oriented it is.
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I’m just kind of blown away by what folks think are “average” schools. University of Washington? UNC? Cal Poly ?
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My alma mater Rhodes College has a beautiful campus In Memphis, TN and great academics. Rhodes is very generous with financial aid and schoiarships. Rhodes has very good law school and med schools admission rates. Rhodes and the other Colleges that Change Lives are all worth a look. https://ctcl.org
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I haven’t been there myself, but Washington & Jefferson in southwestern PA has been very well liked by students who have gone there, and it does well for pre-meds, etc. It rarely gets mentioned on CC. I’ll admit to not being sure why.
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Carthage College in WI. Smaller school, right on the lake, good school spirit, small class sizes, and “midwest nice”.
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Where the commissioner of the NFL went
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The OP said schools outside the Top 40, so Washington and Cal Poly both apply. But clearly, they aren’t your average schools. If you wanted “average” schools, perhaps schools that are past 200 in the US News rankings. Maybe “overlooked schools” is the better term?
Just goes to show that even excellent schools get looked over just because they aren’t in the Top 40, which for the most part is BS. You can get a great education at many schools that aren’t super highly ranked.
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LOL, I agree. I know the OP might have mentioned “outside the T40” or T60, but I think she was gtting at something beyond state flaghships like UW and UNC, or even NC State, UIUC and Michigan State.
Schools further off the radar like the ones the OP mentioned, Rollins Elon and UDayton, seem to set the tone away from well-known, low-admittance rates, impacted majors of UW and UIUC.
I’m not sure if we need to go as far as starting at 200 as suggested by @sbdad12 (but certainly include schools outside the T200) but at least start outside the T90 or T100. Skip flagships, which by being named flagships explicitly says they are not average. I’d even go so far as to say skip many secondary flagships like FSU, Va Tech, and probably all UCs and some CStates. Skip the top 5 publics in TX - how good (or bad) is the 11th ranked public in TX?
I like hearing about publics in other states that are between the flagship and the least-preferred choices. For instance, we all know Minn-TC is great, but what is the VCU of MN or WI?
When S20 and I visited VCU, we were shocked by how great the setting was. We went to Richmond to tour URichmond (which is a great school in a great setting) but were also blown away by all that VCU had to offer. For students looking to go to a different state but aren’t admitted to UVA/VaTech, I think VCU would be a great option that won’t break the bank.
Heck, now that Elon is entrenched in the T90 (and climbing), maybe Elon is too recognized to be on this list. 
. What are the pre-USNWR-ranking Elon-like colleges, like Rollins and Dayton? My son is at Dayton and loves it. But we more or less stumbled into adding UDayton to the list and it would have been easy to have overlooked it while initially considering only T100 schools. I wish there was a way to generate more discussion on CC about more of these “average” schools.
I love reading firsthand opinions of schools like Quinnipiac, or Valparaiso, or Thomas Jefferson, or Hampton. Contrary to how it might appear on CC, more students attend non-T100 schools than T100. They can’t all be receiving bad educations?
Hey, maybe a discussion of average schools could include only schools that have an admit rate >= 50%? After all, if the average college-bound student can’t be admitted into a college, can that college even be considered to be average?
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My daughter loved Mizzou when we visited. She loved the size of the campus, the feel of the town, the students she talked to and everything she heard about the nursing program except for one thing. It wasn’t direct entry. She went to Michigan which is.
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Centre college is another “hidden gem”.
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This thread from 2018 has a lot of hidden gems. Note that several of the early responses are not hidden gems, as the subject title was later changed to include underrated.
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In North Carolina I would say Appalachian State, UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Greensboro, UNC-Asheville, I guess UNC-Wilmington and East Carolina although they don’t appeal to my D22. NC A&T and NC Central are two really good HBCUs in NC, too. People seem to really like Elon and High Point, but they don’t float her boat either. I have an “average for CC” student (meaning a B+ student, not a C student) and we are going to look at VCU and Richmond tomorrow.
For bargains you can’t beat Western Carolina, UNC-Pembroke, or Elizabeth City State. Tuition is $500 per semester in-state $2500 per semester OOS.
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A guy I call on for work - his kid went to Western Carolina…cute campus in the mountains she said…loved it. Went for teaching. I mean, teachers get hired from all schools…if that’s your future, why the heck not!!
Since you mentioned it, I would say U Wi-La Crosse is a great school. People from all over know UWi-Madison of course but few know about UW-Lax. Lax has some great offerings and is in a town that has 3 colleges within walking distance to each other. UW-Lax offers Radiation Therapy and Nuclear Medicine Technology bachelors. They have grad programs in PT, OT, PA and Medical Dosimetry.
In Minnesota, Winona State is a solid choice (and its close to UW-Lax). In Illinois, Northern Illinois University.
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