ALUMNI SALARY (20%)

Data from Payscale and College Scorecard are used to determine which colleges produced the highest-paid graduates. From Payscale, the renking looks at  graduates’ median earnings six years and ten years after graduation. From the College Scorecard, the ranking pulls median earnings data for graduates six years and ten years after they first enrolled at an institution. Each of the four income segments is weighted at 5%.

DEBT (15%)

Two variables from College Scorecard are used to measure the typical debt load for students at a given college. First, the median federal loan debt per borrower is multiplied by the percentage of students who take out federal student loans at the college (the debt and percent borrowed index). Second, the ranking looks at each college’s five-year repayment rate which is the percentage of graduates who paid at least $1 toward their federal loan principal within five years of entering repayment. Both of these variables were weighted at 7.5% for a total of 15%.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT (15%)

To give ranking's users a look at the return on students’—and parents’—investment at a given institution, Third Way produces a price-to-earnings premium for each college. Third Way calculates this number by dividing the total net price of obtaining a college degree by the post-enrollment earnings boost that students get compared to the typical salary of a high school graduate in their state. This variable is weighted at 10%. A price-to-earnings premium for low-income students is also included, weighted at 5%.

GRADUATION RATE (15%)

The ranking evaluates the colleges on its list using their six-year graduation rate in order to account for the outcomes of transfer students, part-time students, and other students who take time off for financial, health-related or other reasons. Ten percent of our scoring model uses the six-year graduation rate for all students, and another 5% is based on graduation rates for Pell Grant recipients, which is often used as a proxy for low-income students at a given institution. The ranking indexes the Pell graduation rate with the proportion of Pell Grant recipients at each institution to reward colleges for enrolling and graduating a larger proportion of low-income students.

FORBES AMERICAN LEADERS LIST (15%)

To assess the leadership and entrepreneurship of their graduates, it is compiled how many listmakers each school produced on the Forbes 30 Under 30, Forbes 400, Richest Self-Made Women and Most Powerful Women lists. Individuals in public service were also considered, including members of the Presidential cabinet, Supreme Court, Congress and sitting governors. Finally, the list included winners of the MacArthur Fellowship, Nobel Prize, Breakthrough Prize, Lasker Prize, Fields Prize, Academy Awards, Oscars, Tony’s, NAACP Awards, Guggenheim Fellowship, major sport all-stars, Presidential Medals and Pulitzer Prizes.

RETENTION RATE (10%) 

To account for student satisfaction, IPEDS’s three-year average full-time student retention rate is used, which measures the percentage of students who choose to stay after their freshman year.

ACADEMIC SUCCESS (10%) 

Two measures, equally weighted at 5%, are used. The number of recent graduates of each college who have gone on to win Fulbright, Truman, Goldwater, Rhodes, Gates and Cambridge scholarships years is compiled. Second, the data from the federal government’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) is used to determine the average number of alumni at a given college who earned a Ph.D. over the last three years, weighted by the college’s enrollment.