Verified 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.

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Massachusetts schools in dataset

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How We Rank Massachusetts Colleges

Rankings use a composite score from verified 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. 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	Harvard University Cambridge, MA	3.6%	$17,525	98%	$101,817
4	Franklin W Olin College of Engineering Needham, MA	25.2%	$43,184	96%	$129,455
5	Wellesley College Wellesley, MA	14%	$22,174	92%	$84,803
6	Babson College Wellesley, MA	17.1%	$32,019	93%	$123,938
7	Amherst College Amherst, MA	9%	$19,049	94%	$77,644
8	Bentley University Waltham, MA	45.1%	$45,802	87%	$120,959
9	Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA	16.4%	$32,519	91%	$103,937
10	Tufts University Medford, MA	11.5%	$32,367	94%	$83,214