Federal Data · No Paid Rankings
Best Colleges in Delaware
Top Delaware colleges ranked by what actually matters after graduation: earnings, completion rates, and what you actually pay. Federal data. No surveys, no sponsorships.
How We Rank Delaware Colleges
Rankings use a composite score from federal data: graduate earnings (28%), graduation rate (25%), social mobility via Pell Grant share (20%), debt burden (15%), and net cost for low-income students (12%). Where a school has not reported one of these, that component is dropped and the remaining weights are rescaled rather than filled in with an estimate. Two adjustments apply: the earnings component is reduced by 13% for schools where graduate students are more than 20% of enrollment and by 25% where they are more than 30%, and a school with no net price on file for families earning up to $30,000 is scored on its overall average net price instead. Only 4-year non-profit schools with sufficient data qualify.
- →Earnings: Median annual earnings 10 years after enrollment. Source: College Scorecard.
- →Graduation rate: Full-time first-time students completing within 150% of normal time. Source: IPEDS.
- →Net price: Average annual cost after all grants and scholarships. Source: IPEDS.
- →Social mobility: Share of students receiving Pell Grants, a direct measure of access for low-income students. Source: IPEDS.
- →Debt burden: Median federal loan debt at graduation. Source: College Scorecard.
Top 4 Colleges in Delaware (2026)
Ranked by composite: earnings, graduation rate, social mobility, debt, affordability.
| # | School | Earnings (10yr) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  University of Delaware Newark, DE | $72,950 |
| 2 | Goldey-Beacom College Wilmington, DE | $59,892 |
| 3 |  Delaware State University Dover, DE | $49,307 |
| 4 | Wilmington University New Castle, DE | $53,844 |
4 Delaware schools in dataset. All shown. Data: IPEDS + College Scorecard. Updated annually.
All 4 Colleges in the Dataset
Every school in the dataset is already in the ranking above. This list links to each school profile.
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