15 MD Schools Make Money’s Best Colleges By Value Ranking

MARYLAND — With the price of everything from cars to groceries climbing, prospective Maryland college students and their parents looking for affordability and high quality have a resource to help narrow down their choices: Money’s new “Best Colleges in America, Ranked By Value” report.

Fifteen Maryland colleges made the list.

The list includes 671 schools that met Money’s criteria. The full methodology is found on Money’s website, but in short it includes financially sound schools with enrollments of 500 or more students and graduation rates at or above the mean for the category of institution.

The data was sorted in three categories: quality of education; affordability, including the availability of grants and other financial aid; and outcomes, a category that takes a comprehensive look at earnings after graduation, graduates’ economic mobility and a new measure on return on investment using data from the Bipartisan Policy Center.

For students who want to stay in Maryland to go to college, the following colleges offer the most value, according to the ranking:

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore

• No. 27
• Overall score: 78.61
• Acceptance rate: 11 percent
• Estimated full price, 2022-23: $69,600
• Estimated price with average grant: $26,700
• Percent of students who get grants: 55 percent

University of Maryland, College Park

• No. 68
• Overall score: 75.01
• Acceptance rate: 51 percent
• Estimated full price, 2022-23: $28,600
• Estimated price with average grant: $18,600
• Percent of students who get grants: 51 percent

Towson University, Towson

• No. 70
• Overall score: 74.77
• Acceptance rate: 79 percent
• Estimated full price, 2022-23: $29,500
• Estimated price with average grant: $17,000
• Percent of students who get grants: 56 percent

St. Mary's College of Maryland, St. Mary's City

• No. 101
• Overall score: 72.60
• Acceptance rate: 79 percent
• Estimated full price, 2022-23: $32,100
• Estimated price with average grant: $21,400
• Percent of students who get grants: 85 percent

Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore

• No. 161
• Overall score: 69.22
• Acceptance rate: 80 percent
• Estimated full price, 2022-23: $71,700
• Estimated price with average grant: $39,500
• Percent of students who get grants: 90 percent

Other Maryland colleges on the list are:

• No. 209, Salisbury University, Salisbury
• No. 293, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Baltimore
• No. 340, Frostburg State University, Frostburg
• No. 356, Hood College, Frederick
• No. 362, Washington College, Chestertown
• No. 374, McDaniel College, Westminster
• No. 510, Goucher College, Baltimore
• No. 562, Bowie State University, Bowie
• No. 602, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore
• No. 604, Morgan State University, Baltimore

Money also has a tool that students and parents can use to further narrow down their search and build a customized list that uses its high-value college rankings to create a grouping that best matches a student’s interests. The list can be re-ranked, based on the importance of financial aid and post-graduate earnings, Money said.

Nationally, the Top 10 schools based on value are:

1. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
3. University of Virginia, Charlottesville
4. Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Buzzards Bay
5. Virginia Military Institute, Lexington
6. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
7. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
8. University of Florida, Gainesville
9. University of California, Irvine
10. University of California, Davis