15 in NJ make Forbes’ top colleges list, with Princeton at No. 3

Princeton University is the No. 3 college nationwide, according to Forbes’ list of America’s Top Colleges.

Fifteen colleges and universities in New Jersey made the list.

New Jersey’s honorees are comprised of seven private institutions and eight public. Forbes reporter Christian Kreznar said that that’s the message of this year’s list.

“Public universities can deliver the most outstanding education to the broadest range of students at the most affordable price. That’s the message of Forbes’ 2021 ranking of top colleges,” Kreznar wrote.

Forbes’ evaluation process changed from its 2019 list to its 2021 list, after taking a hiatus during the height of the pandemic in 2020.

“It isn’t enough to ask which schools give the best return on investment. It’s also important to evaluate what kind of students they educate and whether they make themselves accessible to those who can’t afford high sticker prices,” Kreznar wrote. “Even if, like Harvard, they promise to pay full freight for the low-income applicants they accept, do they take enough disadvantaged students to make that promise meaningful?”

Prior lists were mainly focused on data from PayScale, which collects salary information from users who want access to its database. The 2021 iteration puts a larger focus on the federal government’s College Scorecard, which was introduced in 2013 and reports the net price students pay at nearly 7,000 U.S. colleges. According to Forbes, net price is the average actual cost of each school, accounting for grants, scholarships and tuition discounts. The Scorecard also uses Internal Revenue Service data to track earnings of college grads who have received federal aid.

Of the New Jersey colleges and universities that made the list, Princeton had the highest average grant aid ($52,188), the lowest average debt ($3,888), and the highest average early-career salary ($150,500). Monmouth University, which on average doled out $23,789 in grant aid, had the second-lowest average debt at $4,004 and an average early career salary of $96,300.

With a large swathe of the 2021 honorees being public institutions, this year’s ranking “more accurately represents the schools that most of America’s college students attend,” Kreznar wrote. “According to federal data, nearly 80% of the nation’s 16 million undergraduates go to public schools.”

New Jersey‘s top colleges, according to Forbes:

No. 3: Princeton
No. 158: Stevens Institute of Technology
No. 174: College of New Jersey
No. 189: New Jersey Institute of Technology
No. 212: Rutgers University
No. 215: Seton Hall University
No. 223: Ramapo College of New Jersey
No. 277: Montclair State University
No. 293: Drew University
No. 352: Rowan University
No. 374: Fairleigh Dickinson University
No. 394: Monmouth University
No. 452: Stockton University
No. 531: Saint Peter’s University
No. 538: New Jersey City University