Webb Institute, a specialized naval engineering school in Glen Cove, beats out Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton, Stanford and Harvard on Money magazine’s new list of The Best Colleges for Your Money.
At No. 2 on the new “value ranking,” Webb offers just one double major, in naval architecture and marine engineering — at a tuition cost of zero.
“Thanks to a substantial endowment, every Webb student who is a U.S. citizen or green card holder gets a full-tuition scholarship, worth $44,000 this year,” Money’s website says.
“It’s an extraordinary value” for the school’s roughly 80 undergraduates, Money said.
It was “a fabulous surprise,” R. Keith Michel, Webb’s president, said Monday. School officials, he said, were notified Monday morning by email as to the ranking and the school’s place on it.
The top 10 is “a very prestigious group,” he said, “and we’re just happy [Money] really dug into the data and found we merited this ranking.”
Webb follows only No. 1-ranked Babson College, in Babson Park, Massachusetts, which specializes in business and entrepreneurship. Ranked third is MIT, followed by Princeton in New Jersey; Stanford, Palo Alto, California; Harvard; Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California; Cooper Union, Manhattan; Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah; and California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
The newly published Money listing ranks 665 four-year colleges based on factors related to educational quality, affordability and alumni earnings.
It’s all about identifying schools that “offer the most bang for your tuition buck,” said Money, which, from the country’s some 1,500 four-year schools, screened out those with graduation rates deemed below-average.
The research resulted in “a list of colleges — some famous, some surprising — that, according to the best data available, provide real value,” said Kim Clark, the Money senior writer who created the rankings and is quoted in a release on the Webb Institute site.
At Webb, founded in 1889 by shipbuilder William H. Webb, the student-to-faculty ratio is about 7 to 1, with 11 full-time faculty and no teaching assistants, the school’s website says.
The job placement rate is 100 percent within a year of graduation, the school’s site said, and according to Money, new graduates say that within five years they’re earning about $65,000 annually. The acceptance rate of applicants is 38 percent, Money says. As of last fall, about 16 percent of the student body was from Long Island — more than double the 7 percent of a decade ago.
Article via Newsday.com
By Patricia Kitchen