The Princeton Review’s list of Best Value Colleges for 2021 names UCF in the top 200, coming in at No. 46.
The education-services company based its ratings on more than 40 categories and annually identifies institutions with the highest return on investment. The review covers topics such as academics, cost/financial aid, job-placement services, graduation rates, student debt and alumni salary levels.
The list was made after more than 650 schools were reviewed. The colleges that made the list this year represent about 1.2% of the four-year undergraduate institutions in the U.S., says Rob Franek, editor-in-chief of The Princeton Review.
The list was made after more than 650 schools were reviewed.
“These colleges have a comparatively low sticker price and/or generous financial-aid offerings,” Franek says. “We recommend and commend them highly for everything their administrators, faculties, staff, and alumni are doing to educate their students and to guide them to post-college success.”
Of this year’s respondents, more than 14,000 college applicants and parents, 82% said financial aid would be ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ necessary to pay for college, and 89% said the pandemic had affected their perspectives about their college applications, Franek says.
Among those who said the pandemic had affected their decisions about which colleges they were considering, the majority (54%), said they were applying to schools with lower sticker prices, and 32% said they were applying to schools closer to home.
Kiplinger, Washington Monthly magazine and the financial website WalletHub also have listed UCF in the past year as a top-performing university at low cost.
The University of California—Berkeley earned the top spot among public schools, and Princeton University was the top private school on this year’s Princeton Review list. Princeton University and The Princeton Review are not connected.
