College Factual  by our College Data Analytics Team
       Unbiased Factual Guarantee

An Overview of College Factual’s Best Value Colleges Rankings

The goal of the College Factual Best Value Colleges rankings is to measure the quality of education a student will receive for each dollar they might spend at a specific college, relative to all the other colleges in the United States. This ranking is heavily influenced by our College Factual Best Colleges. As an overview, our analysis of quality includes many detailed factors under the following broad categories:

College aid is often based on family income levels and your cost is unlikely to be the same as a second student’s cost. For this ranking we then calculate the expected net cost of this ranked quality at a number of income levels. This set of rankings will help you narrow down colleges that might be a fantastic opportunity for your situation. We also have rankings that look at how much quality for your dollar you get at each of the following family income brackets.

In addition to these rankings, you can also filter the list by location or view the best value schools for a particular major. If you’d like to do so, just go to one of the links above and scroll down to the “Additional (or Related) Rankings” section.

A Note On Special Rankings

Our rankings for Graduate Degrees are a bit different. Click here for more information.

Our Best Colleges by Religious Affiliation uses the same ranking methodology as our quality rankings outlined above. The schools are simply grouped into categories by their religious affiliation as reported to IPEDS.

We created a unique methodology to rank Best Colleges for Veterans. Read about the methodology behind this ranking here.

In an effort to help non-traditional students find their best fit school, we have also created a Best Colleges for Non-Traditional Students ranking with a unique methodology you can read about here.

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