Kiplinger magazine has named seven schools in Virginia to its list of 100 best value public colleges. For Virginians looking to stay close to home, the University of Virginia and the College of William and Mary snagged high rankings. U. Va. ranked No. 2 for best values in in-state public colleges while W & M came in at No. 4. The other schools in-state rankings were as follows: James Madison University (No.22); Virginia Tech (No. 27); University of Mary Washington (No. 61); George Mason University (No. 72) and Christopher Newport University (No. 84).
Kiplinger also ranked the colleges’ values for out-of-state students in the following way: U. Va. (No. 2), W &M (No. 6) ; JMU (No. 29) ; Virginia Tech (No. 31) ; CNU (No. 56) ; UMW (No. 61) and GMU (No. 90).
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill snatched the No. 1 spot for both in-state and out-of-state students.
Kiplinger looked at nearly 600 public colleges for the list which it has compiled since 1998 (back then, in-state costs rarely topped $10,000 and out-of-state costs were under $20,000 most of the time, the magazine says). The publication examined a school’s admission-rate, four-year-graduation rate, yearly cost, cost after financial aid and average debt after graduation. For the full list, click here.