Colleges Transitions Names 200 Schools “Worth Your Money” for 2025

College Transitions is one of the most reliable online sources for higher education data and admissions advice with over 10 million annual readers. We are also the authors of two popular college guidebooks, The Enlightened College Applicant, now in its 2nd edition and Colleges Worth Your Money, now in its 5th edition. Our organization firmly believes that any high schooler in the college search phase will benefit from the soon-to-be-released 2025 edition of Colleges Worth Your Money (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024) which is currently $19.99 for the paperback (Prime eligible) on Amazon.com. Feel free to pre-order now and receive the book upon its release on June 1st. Booklist, the reviewing arm of the American Library Association called it “a top guide…succinct, affordable, and highly readable” and ultimately “a superb choice” for anyone seeking college admissions assistance.

What makes a college “Worth Your Money”?

The worth of a college degree is almost always context-dependent. Plenty of students attend unspectacular universities and go on to incredible levels of success; conversely, plenty of young people have attended prestigious institutions and struggled in their careers. A school that may be an incredible value for an in-state electrical engineering major may be a terrible choice for out-of-state students concentrating in sociology.

Parents/students who are about to essentially take out another mortgage to finance their own or their teen’s college education should, at the very least, first perform the equivalent of a home inspection. Just as it is easy to fall in love with a house based on a Zillow photo, many select a college based on surface observations: the campus is pretty, the school colors would look nice on a bumper sticker, or they’ve heard good things from other parents in their social circle. Think of Colleges Worth Your Money as an inspection report with no crawlspace left unexplored.

Each profile of the 200 institutions listed below includes six statistically rich narrative sections and two tables containing in excess of seventy additional data points. This includes an in-depth look at career services offerings and the job/graduate school outcomes for recent alumni.

The 200 schools that made the cut

• Agnes Scott College
• American University
• Amherst College
• Arizona State University
• Auburn University
• Babson College
• Bard College
• Berea College
• Barnard College
• Baruch College (CUNY)
• Bates College
• Baylor University
• Bentley University
• Binghamton University (SUNY)
• Boston College
• Boston University
• Bowdoin College
• Brandeis University
• Brigham Young University
• Brown University
• Bryn Mawr College
• Bucknell University
• California Institute of Technology
• California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
• Carleton College
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Case Western Reserve University
• Centre College
• Claremont McKenna College
• Clark University
• Clarkson University
• Clemson University
• Colby College
• Colgate University
• The College of New Jersey
• The College of Wooster
• College of the Holy Cross
• College of William & Mary
• Colorado College
• Colorado School of Mines
• Columbia University
• Connecticut College
• The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
• Cornell University
• Dartmouth College
• Davidson College
• Denison University
• DePauw University
• Dickinson College
• Drexel University
• Duke University
• Elon University
• Emerson College
• Emory University
• Fairfield University
• Florida State University
• Fordham University
• Franklin & Marshall College
• Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
• Furman University
• George Mason University
• George Washington University

Colleges Worth Your Money – 200 Schools (Continued)

• Georgetown University
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• Gettysburg College
• Gonzaga University
• Grinnell College
• Hamilton College
• Harvard University
• Harvey Mudd College
• Haverford College
• Hobart & William Smith Colleges
• Hofstra University
• Howard University
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• Indiana University Bloomington
• Ithaca College
• James Madison University
• Johns Hopkins University
• Juniata College
• Kalamazoo College
• Kenyon College
• Lafayette College
• Lawrence University
• Lehigh University
• Lewis & Clark College
• Loyola Marymount University
• Loyola University Maryland
• Macalester College
• Marist College
• Marquette University
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Miami University
• Michigan State University
• Middlebury College
• Mount Holyoke College
• New York University
• North Carolina State University
• Northeastern University
• Northwestern University
• Oberlin College
• Occidental College
• The Ohio State University—Columbus
• Pennsylvania State University – University Park
• Pepperdine University
• Pitzer College
• Pomona College
• Princeton University
• Providence College
• Purdue University – West Lafayette
• Reed College
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Rhodes College
• Rice University
• Rochester Institute of Technology
• Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
• Rutgers University—New Brunswick
• San Diego State University
• Santa Clara University
• Sarah Lawrence College
• Scripps College
• Sewanee – The University of the South
• Skidmore College
• Smith College
• Southern Methodist University
• Spelman College
• St. Lawrence University
• St. Mary’s College of Maryland
• St. Olaf College
• Stanford University
• Stevens Institute of Technology
• Stony Brook University (SUNY)
• Swarthmore College
• Syracuse University
• Temple University
• Texas A&M University – College Station
• Texas Christian University
• Trinity College (CT)
• Trinity University
• Tufts University

Colleges Worth Your Money – 200 Schools (Continued)

• Tulane University
• Union College (NY)
• United States Air Force Academy
• United States Military Academy
• United States Naval Academy
• University at Buffalo (SUNY)
• University of Arizona
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of California, Davis
• University of California, Irvine
• University of California, Los Angeles
• University of California, Riverside
• University of California, San Diego
• University of California, Santa Barbara
• University of California, Santa Cruz
• University of Chicago
• University of Colorado Boulder
• University of Connecticut
• University of Delaware
• University of Denver
• University of Florida
• University of Georgia
• University of Illinois at Chicago
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• University of Iowa
• University of Maryland, College Park
• University of Massachusetts Amherst
• University of Miami
• University of Michigan
• University of Minnesota – Twin Cities
• University of North Carolina Asheville
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• University of Notre Dame
• University of Oregon
• University of Pennsylvania
• University of Pittsburgh – Pittsburgh Campus
• University of Richmond
• University of Rochester
• University of San Diego
• University of South Carolina
• University of Southern California
• The University of Texas at Austin
• University of Utah
• University of Virginia
• University of Washington – Seattle
• University of Wisconsin – Madison
• Vanderbilt University
• Vassar College
• Villanova University
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• Wake Forest University
• Washington and Lee University
• Washington University in St. Louis
• Wellesley College
• Wesleyan University
• Whitman College
• Willamette University
• Williams College
• Worcester Polytechnic Institute
• Yale University

Why some colleges made the list and others did not

We wish to be fully transparent about an important issue: There is no definitive algorithm that would determine the dollar-for-dollar “best colleges for your money.” Sure, you could base your rankings solely on return-on-investment figures and just list the top 200 schools in terms of median salaries. However, doing so would pretty much produce a list of the colleges that produce the greatest percentage of business, computer science, and engineering grads because those fields generally pay the best. You could also concoct a pseudoscientific formula with dozens of inputs that would spew out a concrete score that would serve as a defense as to why one school made the top 200 and others were left out in the cold.

In truth, selecting these schools was as much art as science. In aiming to create a useful college guide, we drew on our collective experience of having guided thousands of students through the application process over the past decade. In seeking quantifiable evidence of value, we also examined every available report on earnings, social mobility, academic rankings, and school-specific outcomes. In the end, we were genuinely surprised by some of the lesser-known schools that stood out by those metrics and were equally surprised by some big-name schools that fared poorer than expected. Ultimately, we are extremely confident that every institution included in our book does admirable work on behalf of its undergraduates.

On the other hand, there are not only 200 schools that are, in our professional opinion, “Worth Your Money.” So before alums or representatives from omitted schools start penning nasty emails to us, this book is not being intentionally exclusionary—200 is an arbitrary cutoff because—well—you have to have an arbitrary cutoff. Depending on one’s circumstances (again, all higher education value is context-dependent), there may be hundreds more schools that could serve as fine postsecondary destinations from which to springboard into a successful career/life. For example, if you reside in Mississippi, Alaska, or Kansas, you won’t find your flagship state institution in this guide, but, at an in-state tuition cost, that university is likely to provide tremendous value to you.