Washington Monthly - September/October 2014 - 31

times not) that they can't afford the more elite institutions. In part as a result, they graduate from college at
lower rates and make lower lifetime incomes than they
otherwise would have. Moreover, as college costs have
shot up over the years, more and more academically outstanding middle-income students are also finding themselves priced out of many selective institutions that, a
generation ago, they might have gone to. (Affluent families may still be able to afford to send their kids to these
schools, but they might want to question the wisdom
of doing so; unlike the less privileged, more advantaged
students do not see higher wages from attending a more
selective college, according to careful research by Stacy
Berg Dale and Alan Krueger.)
So for these reasons we're introducing a new ranking this year, which we call "Affordable Elites." Our aim,
first and foremost, is to show high-achieving but nonwealthy students that there are still plenty of selective
schools out there that they can likely afford. Indeed,
some will be better bargains than less selective public schools in their states. Our second aim is to demonstrate that not all selective schools are so generous. In
fact, many will charge low- and middle-income students
a king's ransom, leave them buried in debt, and won't
even do a good job of helping them graduate.
We focused on the 224 most selective four-year colleges in our main rankings, with selectivity determined
by a competitiveness score developed by Barron's. We
then rated the colleges on a 0-3 scale on a version of the
same criteria we used to create our "Best Bang for the
Buck" ranking (page 23), including the percent of students receiving Pell Grants, student loan default rates,
six-year graduation rates, and the net price of attendance (the total cost of attending college less all grant
aid received) for families making less than $75,000 per
year. (See page 33 for a fuller explanation of our methodology.) The top 100 schools start on page 32; the rest can
be found online, at washingtonmonthly.com.
Our ranking shows the average ACT/SAT scores and
admission rates of each college (the list is sortable by
test scores on our website). And it breaks down the average net price of each college for students from families
in three different annual income categories: those making $0 to $30,000, $30,000 to $75,000, and more than
$75,000. With this information, students trying to decide which schools to apply to can easily scan the list
and see which they have the best shot at getting into
(based on test scores and admit rates but also Pell percentages, which, for lower-income students, are a good
indication of their chance of being accepted). Then, of
those schools, students can see which will charge them
the least. (Keep in mind that these are average net prices that can and will vary by individual based on criteria
such as family assets.) If you study the list, a few interesting patterns emerge.

The Publics
On most lists of America's elite colleges and universities,
private institutions dominate. That's less true of our Affordable Elites ranking. Seven of our top twenty are public universities, including our number one school, the
University of California, Los Angeles. UCLA scored thirteen out of a possible fifteen points by enrolling large
numbers of Pell Grant recipients (35 percent of the student body), graduating 91 percent of students within six
years, and charging an average price of just over $10,000
after taking grants into account. Three other University
of California campuses (Berkeley, Irvine, and San Diego)
cracked our top ten, and several other notable state flagships round out our top twenty.
While some other public universities (such as CUNY
Baruch College, the University of Florida, and the University of Texas at Dallas) deserve praise for graduating
high percentages of students at a reasonable cost to students while encouraging economic diversity, other selective public universities are not serving their students so
well. These schools, often in states where higher education funding has stagnated in recent years, either aren't
letting in many lower-income students, or are charging
them very high prices, or both. The University of Pittsburgh (#201), Colorado School of Mines (#208), and Miami University of Ohio (#211) all charge at least $15,000
per year to middle-income students-more than some
private colleges.

The Ivies
Many of the Ivy League schools that perennially show
up on other lists of top colleges also do well on our Affordable Elites rankings. That includes Harvard, which
earns its number two ranking by charging an astonishingly low net price of $1,533 to students from families
making $30,000 a year or less and $3,774 to those earning $30,000 to $75,000. Harvard doesn't admit many
low-income students (11 percent of its students receive
Pell Grants), but the ones it does let in get a great deal.
Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, and the Ivy-equivalent
Stanford also make it into our top twenty. But a number
of Ivies don't do as well, including Princeton (#30) and
Yale (#33). Why? Mostly because they're charging nonwealthy students higher prices-three or four times as
much as Harvard.

The Strivers
Other national universities and liberal arts colleges that
rank in, say, the top fifty on the U.S. News & World Report list place much lower on our Affordable Elites list.
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