New College tops best college value list

The Associated Press

NEW YORK Ÿ New College of the University of South Florida, a tiny liberal arts school in Sarasota, again beat the likes of Harvard and Yale in a ranking of best college value.

For the third year running, New College topped Money magazine's list of the top 100 college buys yesterday.

In compiling its list, Money used a formula that considered 16 measures of educational quality, such as college entrance exam scores, ratio of students to tenured faculty, and four-year graduation rates. These were compared against tuition and fees.

The magazine excluded colleges with strong religious requirements.

Tuition at New College for out-of-state freshmen this year is $7,950 while Floridians pay $2,066. New College has an attractive bayside campus and 560 students.

Rice University in Texas was No. 2. Like New College, Rice held its ranking for a third straight year.

Northeast Missouri State University ranked third, followed by New Jersey's Trenton State College and the California Institute of Technology.

Rounding out the top 10 were: University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; State University of New York at Binghamton; Georgia's Spelman College, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and State University of New York at Albany as No. 10.

Seven of the 10 are public institutions.

Some prestigious names rank low on Money's list. Harvard University ranks 43rd, Yale is 46th and Columbia is 97th.

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