Verified Federal Data · No Paid Rankings
Best Colleges in North Carolina
Top North Carolina 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 North Carolina 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 North Carolina (2026)
Ranked by composite: earnings, graduation rate, social mobility, debt, affordability.
| # | School | Earnings (10yr) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Duke University Durham, NC | $97,800 |
| 2 |  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC | $72,200 |
| 3 |  Davidson College Davidson, NC | $81,400 |
| 4 |  North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC | $68,758 |
| 5 | Cabarrus College of Health Sciences Concord, NC | $58,708 |
| 6 |  Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC | $78,158 |
| 7 |  Appalachian State University Boone, NC | $51,836 |
| 8 | University of North Carolina at Charlotte Charlotte, NC | $57,289 |
| 9 |  Elon University Elon, NC | $74,545 |
| 10 |  University of North Carolina Wilmington Wilmington, NC | $54,967 |
57 North Carolina schools in dataset. Top 10 shown. Data: IPEDS + College Scorecard. Updated annually.
All 57 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.
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