2020’s best colleges and universities in nation and in Pennsylvania

As high school seniors are busy preparing their college applications, the WalletHub today released its 2020’s Best College & University Rankings of the top-performing schools that have the lowest possible costs to graduates. The University of Pennsylvania has the highest ranking among Pennsylvania instutions, coming in at number 8.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) and Duke are ranked 1-7, respectively, with Northwestern and the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill rounding out the top 10.

To determine the top-performing schools at the lowest possible costs to undergraduates, WalletHub — a personal finance website — compared more than 1,000 higher-education institutions in the U.S. across 33 key measures. The data set was grouped into seven categories, such as student selectivity, cost & financing and career outcomes. The metrics ranged from student-faculty ratio to graduation rate to post-attendance median salary. It also analyzed post-attendance metrics — the student-loan default rate and the share of former students out-earning high school graduates, for instance — to show the value of the education students can expect to receive beyond their undergraduate studies.

WalletHub also provided separate rankings for colleges and universities nationally. In its college rankings, Pennsylvania’s Swarthmore College ranked number 1, the only Pennsylvania college to appear in the top 10. In the university rankings, the University of Pennsylvania again came in at 8, as it did with the combined rankings.

In addition to its national rankings, WalletHub also released its top 10 colleges and universities for each state. In Pennsylvania, the top 10 are:

1. University of Pennsylvania
2. Swarthmore College
3. Carnegie Mellon University
4. Lehigh University
5. Villanova University
6. Lafayette College
7. Bryn Mawr College
8. Haverford College
9. Bucknell University
10. Muhlenberg College