Based on measures of academic quality and affordability, Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine has named Occidental College one of the country's 50 best values among liberal arts colleges for the third year in a row. Occidental was ranked No. 33, one of just eight western colleges ranked among the top 50.
Kiplinger's is not the only survey to rank Occidental so highly. For the seventh consecutive year, Occidental was rated a "Best Value" school by U.S. News & World Report in its 2010 rankings released in August.
More than 75 percent of Occidental students receive some form of financial aid, which last year averaged $28,160 per student. Occidental also enrolls more Pell Grant recipients than most other nationally ranked liberal arts colleges. Last year, 17 percent of Occidental students were the first in their family to attend college.
Kiplinger's used 12 factors when ranking "best value" schools, including admission rate, SAT or ACT high scores, ratio of students to faculty members, graduation rates, total annual cost, student cost after need-based aid, and percentage of aid from grants. The magazine based its analysis on data of more than 600 private institutions as well as its own reporting and research.
Occidental has been named one of the country's best colleges in the latest editions of several major college guides, including U.S. News & World Report, Princeton Review's The Best 371 Colleges, the Fiske Guide to Colleges, Barron's Guide to the Most Competitive Colleges, The Insider's Guide to the Colleges and ISI's Guide to the Right Colleges.
