Virginia Military Institute (VMI) received 5 stars; William & Mary (W&M), University of Virginia (UVA) and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VA Tech) all received 4.5 stars.
Money Magazine uses a unique star rating system and includes metrics like the net price of a degree, average borrowing rates, and median earnings. It also calculates “value add” to measure a school’s actual performance against predicted outcomes, assessing how effectively a college impacts graduates’ success.
According to Money Magazine, the ratings begin with 2,400 four-year public and private nonprofit colleges in the country. To make the initial cut, colleges needed at least 500 undergraduate students or 150 freshmen, sufficient and reliable data for analysis, no financial distress, and a graduation rate at or above the median for their institutional category or a high “value-added” graduation rate. A total of 745 schools met these criteria, which were then ranked on 25 factors in three categories.
UMW students typically complete their degrees in 4.2 years, incur an average debt of $20,500, and have early career earnings averaging $60,281 ten years post-enrollment. Additionally, 73% of UMW students earn more than a high school graduate within six years of starting college.
We hope students and parents use our list to discover new colleges that may be worth their attention, and perhaps more importantly, we want our analysis to encourage readers to think critically about what they’re paying for college and what sort of outcomes they can expect in return,” said Kaitlin Mulhere, Money’s education editor.