Report: The Pennsylvania Schools Where You Can Get the Most Bang for Your Buck

SmartAsset has released its Best Value Colleges study. Schools were ranked according to tuition costs, scholarship and grant offerings, student living costs, retention rate and starting salary.

Lehigh University | Photo Courtesy of Joseph Giansante via Wikimedia Commons

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

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