Best Colleges In Massachusetts 2018: Forbes

Harvard is once again No. 1 on Forbes’ 2018 list of top colleges in the United States. Twenty-nine other Massachusetts schools followed in the list released this week, including four more in the top 20.

Three more Massachusetts colleges made the Forbes list compared to last year's edition. This week's list pairs nicely with one earlier this year by Forbes on the 18 Massachusetts colleges that are the best bang for your buck. You can also check out the recent Princeton Review study on which local colleges make their various top 20 lists.

Forbes says that its list values “outputs” more than “inputs.” The methodology explains that rather than measures like SAT scores and acceptance rates, it looks at things like alumni salaries, college debt and retention and graduation rates. (You can read the full methodology here.)

The top of this year's overall list saw the usual suspects. Yale, Stanford, MIT and Princeton joined Harvard in the first five.

Here are the Massachusetts schools that made Forbes’ list, along with cost:

• 1. Harvard, $69,900
• 4. MIT, $67,430
• 11. Williams, $70,650
• 16. Amherst, $71,300
• 33. Tufts, $70,600
• 44. Wellesley, $69,034
• 50. Boston College, $70,588
• 59. Holy Cross, $66,220
• 68. Babson, $68,432
• 78. Boston University, $70,302
• 79. Smith, $69,563
• 97. Brandeis, $70,943
• 120. WPI, $65,046
• 124. Bentley, $66,180
• 128. Mt. Holyoke, $63,900
• 181. Clark, $55,010
• 183. UMass, $48,135
• 217. Northeastern, $68,177
• 226. Emerson, $65,324
• 232. Stonehill, $59,560
• 251. Wheaton, $65,818
• 276. Hampshire, $67,114
• 334. Mass. Maritime, $43,085
• 368. Wentworth Institute of Tech., $54,071
• 381. Simmons, $58,230
• 403. Assumption, $54,594
• 418. Gordon, $49,940
• 437. UMass-Lowell, $46,983
• 439. Merrimack, $57,865
• 573. UMass-Boston, $46,491

>You can see the full list of Forbes’ top colleges 2018 list here.

Here are the top 10 colleges in the United States, according to Forbes:

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford University
4. MIT
5. Princeton
6. California Institute of Technology
7. Penn
8. Brown
9. Dartmouth
10. Duke

>You can see Forbes’ full report on 2018’s top colleges here.

Forbes noted the strong showing California colleges made on its list, highlighting the University of California, Berkeley, which went up 15 spots from last year to No. 14. Forbes said it was the first time a state school was that high on its list.

The magazine also gave a shout out to Purdue University for reforms that have reduced the cost of attending the college and doubled its undergraduate enrollment.

Feroze Dhanoa, Patch, contributed to this report.

(Photo at Harvard by Glen Cooper/Getty Images)