Great Schools at great prices

Great schools at great prices

Where can you expect to get the most for your money? To determine which schools offer families the best value, they use a formula that relates a school's academic quality, as indicated by its overall U.S. News ranking, with the net cost of attending to a student who receives the average level of financial aid.

The higher the quality of the school's academic program and the lower the cost to the student, the better the deal. They only considered the national universities and liberal arts colleges in the top half of the U.S News rankings and regional institution in the top quarter. That's because they believe that families will find the most significant values among colleges that are above average academically.

METHODOLOGY

These rankings were based on three variables: (1.) Ratio of quality to price. A schools quality ranking-its overall score in the America's Best Colleges 2000 survey- was divided by the cost to an average student there who receives a grant meeting his or her financial need. The higher the ratio of quality rank to the discounted cost, the better the value. (2.) Percentage of all undergraduates receiving grants meeting financial need during the 1998-99 academic year. (3.) Average discount: percentage of a schools total costs (tuition, room and board, fees, books, and other expenses) covered by the average need-base grant to undergraduates. In the case of public institutions, out of state tuition and percentage of out of state students receiving grants meeting need in the 1998-99 school year were used.

Overall rank was determined first by standardizing the scores achieved by every school in each of the three variables and weighting those scores. The first variable-the ratio of quality to price-accounted for 60 percent of the overall score, the percentage of all undergraduates receiving grants accounted for 25 percent, and the average discount accounted for 15 percent. The weighted points became No.1 in the category. Next, its score was converted to a percentile of 100. The scores for the other schools were then converted into a percentage of that achieved by the No.1 school and ranked in descending order.

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