New Jersey Institute of Technology and Princeton University earned top ratings in Money’s 2024 analysis of the Best Colleges in America, released Wednesday.
With five stars, NJIT and Princeton tied as the highest-rated university in New Jersey and matched STEM schools like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology.
The rating marks an improvement from last year for NJIT, which earned 4½ stars. In 2023, Money shifted from a numerical ranking of the top universities and colleges in the U.S. to individual ratings, based on factors such as graduation rates, cost of attendance, financial aid and alumni salaries.
Just 745 schools made the Best Colleges cohort this year; of those, 54, or 7%, earned five stars.
“This rating affirms the quality and value of an NJIT education, which is both attractive and affordable,” NJIT President Teik Lim said. “We prepare students to pursue their passions and to thrive in the technology-driven economy of today and the future. And like our students, we focus on results.”
“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,” Money’s education editor, Kaitlin Mulhere, said.
SoFi is the premiere sponsor for this year’s Best Colleges list.
With a focus on above-average graduation rates, Money scored colleges in three areas: quality, affordability and future earning potential. These data points take into account important factors like Money’s unique calculation of the net price of a degree, average borrowing rates, median earnings and four “value add” calculations measuring a school’s actual performance against its predicted performance based on its student body. To read the full rating, click here.
Money’s 2024 five-star Best Colleges are as follows:
- Amherst College
- Babson College
- Bentley University
- Berea College
- Boston College
- Bowdoin College
- Brown University
- California Institute of Technology
- California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
- California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
- California State University, Long Beach
- California State University, Stanislaus
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Claremont McKenna College
- Columbia University
- Cornell University
- CUNY Bernard M. Baruch College
- Dartmouth College
- Davidson College
- Duke University
- Georgetown University
- Georgia Institute of Technology
- Harvard University
- Harvey Mudd College
- Johns Hopkins University
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Massachusetts Maritime Academy
- New Jersey Institute of Technology
- Northwestern University
- Pomona College
- Princeton University
- Rice University
- Stanford University
- Swarthmore College
- The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
- 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 Chicago
- University of Florida
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- University of Michigan
- University of Notre Dame
- University of Pennsylvania
- Virginia Military Institute
- Washington and Lee University
- Washington University in St Louis
- Wellesley College
- Wesleyan University
- Williams College
- Yale University
