MIT Offers the Best Value Among Universities in the U.S.

MIT by Niall Kennedy on Flickr/Creative Commons

It turns out building a Better World pays pretty well, too.

In a shocking turn of events, students of the university responsible for things like the Human Genome Project and the World Wide Web (and cellos that can read your mood) tend to find themselves gainfully employed after graduation, according to a study by SmartAsset.com.

The study found that MIT, with its plentiful grant and scholarship opportunities and a cool $78,300 average starting salary for graduates, affords students the ‘best value’ of any school in the country. Harvard, at sixth, was the only other university in Massachusetts to crack the national top ten. (It’s worth noting here that one of those schools offers a major in comparative literature and the other does not.)

The study weighed scholarships and grant opportunities, average starting salaries, and student retention rate against tuition and living costs. Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California was second and Stanford University was third.

Among Massachusetts schools, Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and UMass Boston rounded out the top five, respectively, after MIT and Harvard. That’s good news for those of us unlikely to attend a school with a single-digit acceptance rating anytime soon.