These Are the Best Colleges in America Right Now

Applying to college is always a stressful experience — but students beginning their search this year are doing so at an especially tumultuous time in higher education.

U.S. colleges are bracing for a bevy of possible changes under the second Trump presidency, including cuts to research grant funding, increased taxes on endowments, shrinking federal funding for some college access programs and a crackdown on international student enrollment. Congress, meanwhile, is putting together a massive budget bill that, if passed, would drastically alter federal Pell Grants and student loans.

It’s not yet clear how many of those changes will stick, but almost all of them would put pressure on college budgets, which could ultimately impact how much students pay and what they get for their tuition dollars. Already, several campuses have announced layoffs or hiring freezes in anticipation of looming federal and state budget cuts.

“The volume of higher ed news right now is, frankly, overwhelming,” says Marc Zawel, who cofounded the admissions consulting company AcceptU in 2009. “There’s a lot of noise that [students are] trying to work through to make sense of what actually affects them.”

Amid so much uncertainty, experts say families should focus on what’s actually within their control: finding a college within budget where their student will have access to the academic programs and campus culture they want.

Money’s annual list of the Best Colleges in America can help. The 11th edition of our ratings focuses on affordability and return on investment — both critical factors when 6 in 10 parents in a recent survey reported that inflation and rising living expenses have made it even harder to pay for college.

The 2025-2026 list features 732 colleges where we've determined students are more likely to graduate and land jobs. For the third year in a row, Money is presenting our Best College picks on a 5-star scale in an effort to demonstrate colleges' relative performance without a numbered ranking, which can often overstate small differences between relatively similar schools.

Let's dive in.

What makes a 'Best College'?

Every year, Money weighs about two dozen data points to produce our final list. But the measures that most influence the results tend to answer a few key questions: What does it cost students to attend this college? How many of them end up graduating? And what sorts of salaries do they earn once they do? (See our full methodology here.)

Unlike other places that rank colleges, we don’t look directly at wealth or prestige. Alumni donation rates and institutional spending are not factors in our analysis. Neither are acceptance rates, which don’t tell you anything about the experience you’ll have on campus; the average acceptance rate among all 700-plus colleges on our list is about 67%.

That said, nearly all of the megawealthy, super-selective schools you’ve heard of do well in our ratings. They offer excellent educational experiences (if you can manage to get in). And, crucially, they tend to have enough money in their financial aid budgets to offer some of the most affordable degrees low- and middle-income students can find.

But those schools are not the only spots where students can find a strong return on investment.

Among the 40 colleges with a 5-star Money rating this year, you’ll find that about half are public. Many are flagship universities with recognizable names, like the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But there are also lesser-known gems, like nine California State University System campuses that stand out for their accessibility and affordability.

Take California State University, Stanislaus (5 stars), as an example. The school accepts more than 90% of applicants. After factoring in financial aid, the typical annual price is less than $8,000, and nearly 60% of the roughly 9,000 undergraduates on its Central Valley campus qualify for need-based grants from the federal government.

Four years ago, Stan State partnered with the nonprofit College Possible to launch a program called Catalyze, which connects students with “near peer” coaches to help them navigate common barriers that get in the way of completing a degree. Money’s value-added analysis finds that the university’s 69% graduation rate, which includes students who transferred into the school, is nearly 20% higher than expected based on the makeup of the student body.

(Read more about how we measure a college’s “value add.”)

Halfway across the country is another top-scoring school, Centre College (4.5 stars). At the private liberal arts college in Danville, Kentucky, 79% of students participate in at least one study abroad experience. Some 45% of students finish an undergraduate research project — all while the college maintains an impressive 85% four-year graduation rate.

The cherry on top? More than 9 in 10 of undergraduates get a grant from Centre College, averaging about $40,000. That helps bring the average annual cost down to around $23,800.

Finally, several schools that land at the top of our list do so in part because of their laser focus on setting grads up for successful careers.

That’s the case with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (4.5 stars). The New York-based private institution emphasizes experiential learning via The Arch, a "semester away" program in which students can volunteer, research, travel or work. RPI also makes space for more traditional internships and a co-op program. During the latter, students work full-time in a job related to their major for six- to eight-month periods.

All that real-world training helps them hit the ground running when they leave campus: Median alumni salaries top six figures, and 90% of recent grads earn more than high school graduates (that's a higher-than-typical percentage).

How to use Money’s list to choose the best school for you

You can filter our ratings by net price, campus size, school location and more to build your own, individualized list of possible college matches. As always, we recommend you use our ratings (and other rankings, for that matter) as a tool to expand your initial list of colleges until you reach roughly 20. Then you can drill down.

“There’s no one perfect school, but there are definitely a lot of schools that will check a lot of boxes for you,” says Belinda Wilkerson, a college counselor based in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

In other words: A school that lands in the bottom half of Money's list may still be the best school for you, based on how much it will cost you to attend, how far away you want to be from home, what academic areas you’re interested in and what type of campus culture is important to you. Everyone's calculus is different.

Wilkerson, who’s also the president of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, recommends all the students she works with stop by the career center during a campus tour to ask about internships and how career prep is integrated into the curriculum. Can’t make it on a tour? You can still do some vital research by using sites like LinkedIn to message with alumni who studied the majors you’re interested in at schools on your list.

You should “really dig into” the details of what your picks have to offer you, she says.

Cost is obviously important. In fact, in a time when the price of a degree at even a public college can top six figures, affordability is probably the single most critical factor for all but the wealthiest families.

But even Ellen Kaufman, who specializes in college finances as the founder of advising firm Tuition Resources, stresses that families can’t overlook academic and social fit factors. She describes it as a three-legged stool: “If one of the legs is broken, the whole thing falls over,” Kaufman adds.

From there, she says, remember that finding a college you can afford and where you can picture yourself on campus is just the start.

“It’s what you do when you’re in college that really determines if you’re going to get your money’s worth out of it,” she says.

More from Money:

How to Choose a College Major in the Age of AI

23 Ways to Pay Less for College

Student Loans Will Get (Slightly) Cheaper Next Year Thanks to Lower Interest Rates