College’s high affordability recognized

Grove City College is known for providing a quality education at an affordable cost and a new ranking confirms that. 

Grove City College is ranked sixth on the list of Greatest Affordable Colleges in the Northeast by Great Value Colleges. The website cited the College’s high freshmen retention rate and that 96 percent of alumni are working or in graduate school within six months after graduation. The website, in a survey released this week, also praised that students have many opportunities to join clubs, organizations and activities on campus. 

Great Value Colleges focuses on what students get out of college, unlike other rankings that focus on inputs like SAT scores or high school GPA. The website’s ranking system analyzes schools based on eight equally-weighted categories, only one of which as anything to do with input: six-year graduation rate, freshmen retention rate, student-to-faculty ratio; percentage of classes taught by teaching assistants; average entrance ACT score; number of campus organizations; number of academic programs; and Forbes ranking.

Of course the website factored in affordability, so all of the schools on the list have a net price (total cost of attendance minus the average aid package) under $22,000. A year of tuition at Grove City costs $15,550, about half the cost of comparable private schools. 

Great Value Colleges list of the top 50 colleges is split into the top 25 private schools and the top 25 public schools. They collected data on nearly 180 schools to determine the top 50 schools after assigning them points based on their performance.