Calculating Best Values

Kiplinger's Best Values

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance has rated Washington and Lee No. 5 on its 2009 list of the best values among private liberal arts colleges. For its rankings of private colleges, Kiplinger’s creates two separate lists for private colleges and universities: a university list, which is led by Cal Tech this year, and the liberal arts colleges list on which W&L finished behind only Pomona, Swarthmore, Williams and Davidson. The Kiplinger rankings use data from 600 colleges to measure academic quality and affordability, with quality accounting for two-thirds of the total. Here’s a link to the list of 50. When you click on the individual colleges, you’ll find the data Kiplinger’s used. This seems to be ratings season and, if you missed it, W&L was also cited in a new study in SmartMoney magazine which did a calculation to determine the best colleges for making money. In that one, W&L ranks No. 1 among national liberal arts colleges. And speaking of best values, you may wonder why Washington and Lee is absent from the Princeton Review’s version of those rankings. W&L has declined to participate in Princeton Review’s data collection because of concerns about the methodology used to create its various rankings.