It’s common to be wowed by big-name schools or schools that always appear in national higher-ed rankings, but every student has unique needs in a campus and an academic program.
In fact, there are some institutions that aren’t included in most college rankings, but that still have a lot to offer students. Looking primarily at financial outcomes such as starting salary and ROI, CollegeVine compiled a ranking of consistently underrated college and universities.
The following criteria were used to compile the list: cost of attendance and generosity of financial aid and scholarships; one and five-year ROI after graduation; financial performance of specific majors; and qualitative data on career outcomes like job placements and grad school progression.
San Jose State is chronically underrated by most families and guidance counselors. Because of its location in the heart of Silicon Valley, students pursuing STEM have really good outcomes (thanks to the job market in the Bay Area).
This is another school that has strong STEM outcomes, particularly in more “physical-world” subjects like petroleum engineering, chemical engineering, and other hard sciences. In particular, US News ranks Houston as the #171 college in the country, but the strength of the Houston job market and the excellent merit scholarships put its ROI comfortably in the Top 40 for such programs.
SUNY Binghamton’s success (ranked #80 by US News) is primarily driven by its status as the de-facto flagship of the SUNY system. Another way of understanding SUNY and CCNY is that they are (for academically qualified students) often the “cheapest” way to get good access to the New York City job market.
City College and SUNY Binghamton (see number 3) can be grouped together in that their Top 50 national ROIs in all kinds of majors are driven by recruiting from New York City. In the case of CCNY (ranked outside of the Top 300 by US News), the driver is as much location as anything.
For students aiming for a career in politics, government work, law, or even the humanities, Washington D.C. is an incredibly important place to have access to. While Georgetown is in its own class, after scholarships and financial aid, George Mason (#136 in the US News rankings) offers pretty comparable career outcomes to George Washington (#63), and American University (#79). It also has one of the most influential economics departments for a college not named Harvard or UChicago.
6. Worcester Polytechnic Institute
WPI really benefits from Boston’s reinvention as a modern tech industry hub in the last 20 years—in that sense it’s a parallel to San Jose State because the STEM professions are the home run ROI. The other thing that works to WPI’s benefit is that Massachusetts doesn’t have a true public Ivy as its flagship—unlike California (UC Berkeley/UCLA), Michigan, or Virginia.
This is another college that benefits from its location in New York City. The standout here is majors related to the finance industry, both finance itself and related majors like economics, applied math, and computer science.
8. University of Texas at Austin
UT Austin is already highly ranked by US News (49 in the 2019 rankings), but the perception gap is really between UT Austin and UCLA, UNC-Chapel Hill, the University of Virginia, and the University of Michigan. UT Austin offers better financial outcomes and ROI than all of those colleges, thanks to its relative affordability, aggressive scholarships, and the roaring job market in Austin, Dallas, and Houston (cities where UT Austin is just behind Top 15 school Rice in terms of recruiting importance).
Babson College ranks in the Top 10 for starting salaries and ROI according to CollegeVine’s data for career outcomes in a variety of business-related majors such as accounting and entrepreneurship. In fact, for students specifically interested in studying business as an undergraduate, Babson delivers student outcomes on par with Ivy League universities while being unranked by US News (and in the 20s and 30s for various business majors).
Wellesley is similar to Babson in that it offers Ivy League-comparable outcomes for students in a particular demographic. The difference, of course, is that in Wellesley’s case, the demographic in question is women. For women aiming for top-tier universities, Wellesley offers outcomes on par with or even superior to those of many Ivy League colleges due in particular to the strength of the Boston job market and the degree to which firms looking to access diverse pools of talent recruit specifically at Wellesley. Wellesley also has disproportionately strong outcomes for the humanities and social sciences, which is relatively rare to see amongst the schools on this list.
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