Best Value Colleges

The new figures are in, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill once again leads Kiplinger's list of the best values in public colleges. Even though costs at some of the nation's top schools increased by more than 8% for the 2006-07 school year, you can still get an excellent education for less than $10,000 per year. And you have many great colleges from which to choose.

In our exclusive survey, we identified the 50 public colleges that combine high-quality academics and affordable costs. We first rated the schools based on several measures of academic criteria, such as percentage of 2005-06 freshmen scoring 600 or higher on the verbal and math components of the SAT or scoring 24 or higher on the ACT, admission rates, freshman retention rates, student-faculty ratios, and four- and six-year graduation rates.

Virginia schools had an excellent representation with the following:

3) University of Virginia

4)College of William and Mary

17)James Madison University

18)University of Maryland

20)Virginia Tech.

22)University of Mary Washington Read more here...