Princeton Review’s Best Value Colleges For 2025

The Princeton Review this week released its annual list of the Best Value Colleges this week, highlighting 209 U.S. universities that provide excellent academics and demonstrated career progress compared to the cost of attendance.

Good news for aspiring undergraduate business majors: The list includes more than 20 institutions with excellent business programs that Poets&Quants ranked for 2025. In other words, it’s a great cross reference for the target business programs on your wish list.

Princeton Review calculated the return-on-investment for its 2025 list by measuring the quality of academics, affordability (low cost and/or generous financial aid), and strong career outcomes. Data was collected via its institutional and student surveys administered between fall 2024 and spring 2025. It weights more than 40 data points covering academics, costs, financial aid, debt, grad rates, and career/salary data.

“The schools on our ‘Best Value Colleges’ lists this year are truly exceptional,” Rob Franek, editor-in-chief of The Princeton Review says in a release. “They offer outstanding academics and excellent career services.

“They also demonstrate extraordinary commitments to affordability via generous financial aid and/or comparatively low sticker prices. We commend them for all that they do to help students afford to attend them and we recommend them highly to college applicants.”

BEST VALUE PUBLIC COLLEGES

Cost remains a very real concern for American college students. Among nearly 10,000 college applicants and their parents surveyed by Princeton Review, 99% believed college was worth the expense, but 98% also said financial aid would be necessary to pay for it. Of those, 77% said aid was “very” or “extremely” necessary.

If value is important, college prospects should look first at their in-state, public universities. Tuition for in-state students is often magnitudes cheaper than for out-of-state students at these schools.

Princeton review breaks its best value list into public and private institutions to account for the difference in price (as well as the difference in career outcomes.) Of the 209 total schools highlighted for 2025, 68 are public and 141 are private.

While the college admissions services company (not associated with Princeton University) looks at ROI across the full university – including all academic schools and majors – several of the public universities happen to have excellent business schools.

The top three value schools, in fact, have top 20 business programs, according to Poets&Quants’ 2025 ranking of the Best Undergraduate Business Schools in the U.S.

Take Georgia Institute of Technology. It had the highest ROI in the country for public universities according to Princeton Review. Meanwhile, its Scheller College of Business ranked No. 15 out of 104 P&Q ranked business programs.

The University of Virginia had the second-highest ROI, and its McIntire School of Commerce tied for fourth among business schools.

And University of North Carolina and its Kenan-Flagler Business School were ranked the third highest ROI and ninth highest business school respectively. In fact, Kenan Flagler has topped P&Q’s early-career ROI calculations for four straight years. In five years, 2024 Kenan-Flagler graduates who paid in-state tuition can expect to earn, on average, about $324,472 more than they paid for the degree.

Six of the top 10 universities for return on investment according to Princeton Review have business programs that were highly ranked by P&Q in 2025.

Princeton Review 15 Best Value Public Colleges
Value Rank	University	Location (City/State)	Full-Time Enrollment	P&Q Ranked B-School	2025 P&Q Rank
1	Georgia Institute of Technology	Atlanta, GA	20592	Scheller College of Business	15
2	University of Virginia	Charlottesville, VA	17901	McIntire School of Commerce	4
3	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	Chapel Hill, NC	21075	Kenan-Flagler Business School	9
4	University of California—Irvine	Irvine, CA	30204
5	University of California—Berkeley	Berkeley, CA	33104
6	University of California—San Diego	La Jolla, CA	34955
7	University of Michigan—Ann Arbor	Ann Arbor, MI	34454	Ross School of Business	11
8	University of Washington	Seattle, WA	40754	Foster School of Business	32
9	North Carolina State University	Raleigh, NC	28422
10	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	Champaign, IL	35564	Gies College of Business	19
11	William & Mary	Williamsburg, VA	7055	Mason School of Business	20
12	University of Georgia	Athens, GA	31514	Terry College of Business	33
13	University of California—Santa Barbara	Santa Barbara, CA	23181
14	University of Texas at Austin	Austin, TX	43165
15	University of California—Los Angeles	Los Angeles, CA	33471

BEST VALUE PRIVATE SCHOOLS

While private schools often cost more (sometimes way more) than their public counterparts, they also typically excel in both academics and career outcomes. Take first-year salaries as an example. For the Class of 2024, seven of the top 10 highest-paid business graduates (on average) earned degrees from private institutions, according to data from P&Q’s most recent ranking.

Makes sense that the trend generally holds for other academic schools and colleges at private schools. Institution wide, Princeton data shows that the median starting salary of private-school graduates is $86,528 compared to $74,360 for public. By the middle of their careers, private school grads are making $157,692 compared to $133,634 for public.

For aspiring business majors, eight private schools on Princeton’s ROI list had business schools ranked by Poets&Quants. Those include the No. 1 ranked Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (11th in ROI) and No. 2 Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University (No. 12 ROI).

Most of the best private schools on Princeton’s list don’t offer undergraduate business degrees. MIT, Stanford, and Columbia, for example, all have excellent business schools, but they are for graduate students.

Princeton Review 15 Best Value Private Colleges
Value Rank	University	Location (City/State)	Full-Time Enrollment	P&Q Ranked B-School	2025 P&Q Rank
1	Princeton University	Princeton, NJ	5813
2	California Institute of Technology	Pasadena, CA	987
3	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Cambridge, MA	4535
4	Harvey Mudd College	Claremont, CA	921
5	Stanford University	Stanford, CA	8054
6	Columbia University	New York, NY	9134
7	Williams College	Williamstown, MA	2101
8	Harvard College	Cambridge, MA	7038
9	Dartmouth College	Hanover, NH	4570
10	Yale University	New Haven, CT	6818
11	University of Pennsylvania	Philadelphia, PA	10013	The Wharton School	1
12	Cornell University	Ithaca, NY	16128	Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management	2
13	Duke University	Durham, NC	6682
14	Rice University	Houston, TX	4789
15	Washington and Lee University	Lexington, VA	1886

Princeton Review’s Best Value Colleges for 2025 also highlight the best schools for metrics like financial aid, making an impact, career placement, and alumni networks. You can pour through these lists here.

On the next pages, we highlight the best value public and private universities from Princeton’s list, as well as which of those schools have ranked undergraduate business schools.

PAGE 2: Princeton Review’s 50 Best Value Public Colleges
PAGE 3: 50 Best Value Private Colleges