Report: The Pennsylvania Schools Where You Can Get the Most Bang for Your Buck
Lehigh University’s Linderman Library. Photo Courtesy of Joseph Giansante via Wikimedia Commons.
SmartAsset has released its second annual Best Value Colleges study, ranking the top 10 institutions in Pennsylvania where students can get the best bang for their buck.
Colleges are ranked according to five factors: tuition, scholarship and grant offerings, student living costs, retention rate and starting salary.
The number one school in the country (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was given a college education value index of 100, and the rest of the schools were ranked on a curve. Lehigh University, which ranked first in Pennsylvania, ranked 29th nationally.
You can browse the top 10 colleges in each state as well as the top 10 colleges in the nation via SmartAsset’s interactive map. The study gave 25 percent weighting to starting salary, tuition and living costs and 12.5 percent weighting to scholarships and grants, and student retention rate.
Here’s the list of top 10 Pennsylvania schools, as calculated by SmartAsset:
Rank | School | City | College Education Value Index | ||||
1 | Lehigh University | Bethlehem | 71.75 | ||||
2 | Carnegie Mellon University | Pittsburgh | 71.33 |
| |||
3 | University of Pennsylvania | Philadelphia | 71.05 |
| |||
4 | Lafayette College | Easton | 66.46 | ||||
5 | Bucknell University | Lewisburg | 58.77 | ||||
6 | Grove City College | Grove City | 57.69 | ||||
7 | Penn State – Erie, The Behrend College | Erie | 57.61 | ||||
8 | Villanova University | Villanova | 57.59 | ||||
9 | University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus | Pittsburgh | 57.53 | ||||
10 | Penn State – Main Campus | University Park | 55.79 |
Follow @ClaireSasko on Twitter.
