Best Colleges in the Northeast

The Northeast is where you'll find the country's oldest and most recognizable higher education institutions, including all the of the Ivy League, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and liberal arts colleges like Amherst and Williams.

All of those campuses provide outstanding value for the students who get in, Money’s latest Best College analysis shows. Our annual college rankings focus on affordability and return on investment. They weigh graduation rates, average financial aid and alumni earnings to highlight the campuses where your time and money is most likely to pay off. (You can read the full breakdown of how we scored colleges here.)

Most students choose a college that is relatively close to home, so in addition to our overall rating of 736 colleges, we’re also publishing regional lists of top-scoring colleges.

All but one of the 5-star colleges in the Northeast are private schools, known in part for their challenging admissions criteria and low acceptance rates. (See the full Best Colleges in the Northeast for a longer, more diverse list of top colleges in the region.)

Here are the top colleges in the Northeast, in alphabetical order:

Amherst College

• Location: Amherst, Massachusetts
• Estimated price with average grant: $20,900
• Graduation rate: 95%
• Early career earnings: $81,900

Amherst is known for its commitment to teaching and close interaction between professors and students. There are no required courses, except for a first-year seminar that emphasizes writing and critical thinking. Full profile.

Brown University

• Location: Providence, Rhode Island
• Estimated price with average grant: $26,800
• Graduation rate: 95%
• Early career earnings: $87,800

This Ivy League school gives students an unusual amount of freedom: Aside from taking two writing classes, there are there no required courses. Also, students can design their own concentrations (or majors) and any class can be taken on a pass/fall basis. Full profile.

Columbia University

• Location: New York City
• Estimated price with average grant: $13,300
• Graduation rate: 93%
• Early career earnings: $97,500

During the first two years of study at Columbia, students must dive into the school's celebrated (though challenging) Core Curriculum. Outside of the classroom, the university's Manhattan location provides students with extraordinary opportunities, including cultural attractions and countless internships. Full profile.

Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

• Location: New York City
• Estimated price with average grant: $22,300
• Graduation rate: 91%
• Early career earnings: $76,900

A small college in New York City's artsy East Village, every student here receives at least a half-tuition scholarship. Cooper Union alumni tend to thrive in the competitive art and architecture worlds. Famous former students include Thomas Edison, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Libeskind, who designed New York City's new Freedom Tower. Full profile.

Cornell University

• Location: Ithaca, New York
• Estimated price with average grant: $26,000
• Graduation rate: 95%
• Early career earnings: $98,300

Cornell boasts a highly respected College of Arts & Sciences, as well as architecture and hotel administration programs that are considered leaders in their respective fields. An unusual public-private hybrid, New York state residents can enroll in certain Cornell colleges and pay about $20,000 a year less than the tuition charged to the rest of the university. Full profile.

Dartmouth College

• Location: Hanover, New Hampshire
• Estimated price with average grant: $25,800
• Graduation rate: 95%
• Early career earnings: $95,500

Known as the smallest school in the Ivy League, Dartmouth places a special emphasis on undergraduate pedagogy, with popular majors in economics, political science and engineering. The university operates on an unusual, year-round quarter system (called D-plan) that gives students the flexibility to choose when they take classes and when they're on break. Full profile.

Harvard University

• Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Estimated price with average grant: $14,900
• Graduation rate: 97%
• Early career earnings: $95,100

Harvard students have access to the largest university library in the world, along with distinguished faculty members and an alumni network that boasts names at the top of a range of fields, from music to politics to law. Full profile.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Estimated price with average grant: $33,200
• Graduation rate: 95%
• Early career earnings: $124,000

One of the world's most respected science schools, MIT offers students the opportunity to learn from an impressive cadre of thinkers, with 10 Nobel laureates currently on the faculty. Attending means taking on a challenging workload, which includes physics, biology, chemistry and calculus as required courses. Full profile.

Massachusetts Maritime Academy

• Location: Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts
• Estimated price with average grant: $20,800
• Graduation rate: 79%
• Early career earnings: $99,700

Massachusetts Maritime Academy prides itself on getting students ready for both sea-going and shoreside careers, offering seven undergraduate degrees in fields such as marine engineering, marine transportation, international maritime business and emergency management. The Academy is structured like a military academy (though graduates aren't required to serve in the armed services), and students in certain majors are required to complete "sea terms," spending weeks training aboard a ship. Full profile.

Princeton University

• Location: Princeton University
• Estimated price with average grant: $22,400
• Graduation rate: 98%
• Early career earnings: $110,400

Princeton University has the highest graduation rate of any college in Money's 2023-2024 ratings. It also has one of the most generous financial aid policies: About 60% of students qualify, with those from families earning less than $100,000 typically getting a full-ride scholarship. Full profile.

University of Pennsylvania

• Location: Philadelphia
• Estimated price with average grant: $15,600
• Graduation rate: 96%
• Early career earnings: $112,800

Among the elite departments within Penn are business and economics, which are notoriously demanding. It seems to pay off: median earnings for recent graduates of this Ivy League school are among the highest of all the colleges in Money's ratings and the university lands in the top 1% of all four-year colleges in a return on investment analysis from the Bipartisan Policy Center. Full profile.

Williams College

• Location: Williamstown, Massachusetts
• Estimated price with average grant: $15,500
• Graduation rate: 95%
• Early career earnings: $74,500

One of Williams College's standout traits is an innovative tutorial system; modeled after one at Oxford University, it pairs two students, who critique each other's papers and meet weekly with their professor. More than half of students participate in a tutorial while at Williams, and the college calls it a "remarkable academic experience." Full profile.

Yale University

• Location: New Haven, Connecticut
• Estimated price with average grant: $22,100
• Graduation rate: 97$
• Early career earnings: $96,000

With a traditional liberal arts education, Yale promises its undergraduates will learn "deeply and broadly." The university doesn't require students to take any specific courses, but they must take classes in a wide variety of subjects and demonstrate strong skills in writing, quantitative reasoning and a foreign language. Full profile.

Notes: Prices for public universities reflect in-state tuition charges. Graduation rates measures degree completion within six years for both transfer students and first-time students. Early career earnings are the median earnings for both graduates and non-completers, 10 years after they first enrolled. Sources: U.S. Department of Education, Peterson’s, Money/Witlytic calculations.

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