Federal Data · No Paid Rankings

Best Colleges in Massachusetts

Top Massachusetts colleges ranked by what actually matters after graduation: earnings, completion rates, and what you actually pay. Federal data. No surveys, no sponsorships.

Schools in ranking

Massachusetts schools in dataset

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How We Rank Massachusetts 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 10 Colleges in Massachusetts (2026)

Ranked by composite: earnings, graduation rate, social mobility, debt, affordability.

#	School	Accept	Net Price/yr	Grad Rate	Earnings (10yr)
1	Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA	4.5%	$20,996	96%	$143,372
2	Williams College Williamstown, MA	8.3%	$15,894	94%	$88,665
3	Wellesley College Wellesley, MA	14%	$22,174	92%	$84,803
4	Harvard University Cambridge, MA	3.6%	$17,525	98%	$101,817
5	Babson College Wellesley, MA	17.1%	$32,019	93%	$123,938
6	Amherst College Amherst, MA	9%	$19,049	94%	$77,644
7	Bentley University Waltham, MA	45.1%	$45,802	87%	$120,959
8	Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA	16.4%	$32,519	91%	$103,937
9	Smith College Northampton, MA	21%	$27,305	89%	$64,027
10	Franklin W Olin College of Engineering Needham, MA	25.2%	$43,184	96%	$129,455

70 Massachusetts schools in dataset. Top 10 shown. Data: IPEDS + College Scorecard. Updated annually.

All 70 Colleges in the Dataset

The ranking above shows the top 10 by composite score. Every school in the full dataset is listed here so you can explore beyond the top results.

Comparing across states?

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Find Your Perfect Fit in Massachusetts

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