UMass Amherst Named to Princeton Review’s Top 50 Best Value Colleges List for Public Schools for Fifth Straight Year
Photo: umass.edu
Source: UMass News and Media
The University of Massachusetts Amherst has once again been named to The Princeton Review’s guide of the nation’s “Best Value Colleges,” placing in the Top 50 Best Value Colleges ranking for public schools for the fifth straight year in the 2025 edition of the guide. UMass Amherst slots in at No. 41 in this year’s public schools ranking, up nine positions from last year and the only New England public institution to make the Top 50 for 2025 in the category.
The Princeton Review, a leading tutoring, test prep, and college admissions services company, selected UMass Amherst among the institutions included in its 21st annual “Best Value Colleges” list, which was released on June 24. All 209 public and private schools listed in the guide scored exceptionally in areas of academics, affordable cost of attendance and/or financial aid, and strong career prospects for its graduates.
The 68 public and 141 private institutions were chosen based on a return-on-investment (ROI) rating analysis of more than 40 data points, primarily collected from The Princeton Review’s surveys of administrators at 650 colleges between the fall of 2024 and spring of 2025, as well as data from its surveys of enrolled students and PayScale.com’s surveys of alumni about their starting and mid-career salaries and job satisfaction.
While The Princeton Review does not rank the schools in the overall “Best Value Colleges” guide, it does provide rankings in seven categories. In the Top 50 Best Value Colleges (Public Schools) category, UMass Amherst earned its No. 41 ranking by scoring 89 out of 99 in its ROI rating.
UMass Amherst also placed in the Top 20 Best Schools for Financial Aid (Public Schools) rankings at No. 12, one of only two New England institutions to make the list. The public schools in this category received the highest financial aid rating, which is based on school-reported data on the percentage of students who were determined to have need and received aid, the percentage of need met for those students, and the percentage of students whose need was fully met.
The accolades are just the latest received by UMass Amherst from The Princeton Review. In the past year, the flagship university of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was also named to The Princeton Review’s list of Top 50 Green Colleges for the ninth straight year, landing at No. 25 on the 2025 edition of the list, and UMass Dining earned the coveted No. 1 spot on The Princeton Review’s list of Best Campus Food for an unprecedented eighth consecutive year.
More information about the Best Value Colleges guide, including its methodology and ROI rating criteria, can be found on The Princeton Review website.