North Carolina Schools Make Forbes Top College List

CHARLOTTE, NC -- Four North Carolina schools made Forbes’ “America’s Top Colleges List” for 2017, with one cracking the top 10.

The 2017 list, which was released on Wednesday, looks at what institutions give back to students on the money they spend on a college education. This year's rankings, as Forbes explains, were created to better align with what the magazine values most, "superior return on investment; high impact, leadership and success; and a first-rate student-consumer experience."

Duke University came in at No. 8 on the overall list and was named by Forbes as the top university in the south. Meanwhile, on the overall national list, Davidson College came in No. 34, Wake Forest University was ranked No. 60 and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill was No. 68.

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Forbes describes the rankings as "fiscally minded" and says they does not take into account things like campus atmosphere, Greek life, sports etc. The methodology favors variables like "alumni salary, graduation rate and student satisfaction." Post-graduate success accounted for 35 percent of the ranking; how effectively students at each school avoid or pay back student loan debt accounts for 20 percent of the rankings, as does the student experience. Graduation rate and academic success both account for 12.5 percent. (You can see the full methodology here.)

The colleges that crack the top 10 on Forbes' list of top 50 colleges are:

1. Harvard University
2. Stanford University
3. Yale University
4. Princeton University
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6. California Institute of Technology
7. University of Pennsylvania
8. Duke University
9. Brown University
10. Pomona College

You can find Forbes’ entire list of top colleges here.

Harvard made its way back to number one after landing on the sixth and fourth spot in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Among the top 50, Forbes also points out some surprises: The U.S. Naval Academy (20) edges out the U.S. Military Academy (24), and the University of Michigan Ann Arbor (38) pushed ahead of the University of Virginia (40).

Forbes also ranks the top schools in the Northeast(Harvard University), the top schools in the South (Duke), the top schools in the Midwest (University of Chicago), the top schools in the West (Stanford), the top public schools(United States Naval Academy) and the top private schools(Harvard).

Patch Editor Feroze Dhanoa contributed to this article.