Forbes revamped its methodology for the magazine's Best Value Colleges of 2016, and UC San Diego came in at #5 for all public and private schools on the list, a far cry from its ranking at #123 by Forbes in 2015, when a more simplistic methodology was used to determine best value. UC San Diego is the only San Diego-based university ranked in the top 50 colleges.
According to Forbes, the new ranking of 300 institutions included "the brainiest research universities and leading liberal arts schools, both public and private, that are well worth the investment." Three University of California campuses ranked in the top five schools on the list: UC Berkeley at #1, UCLA at #4, and UC San Diego at #5. UC Irvine also did well, ranked #10 nationwide. Most of the best-value colleges are public schools, with Brigham Young, MIT and Harvard the only private schools to make the top ten (at #2, #6 and #9, respectively). Others rounding out the top ten include the University of Florida, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Georgia Tech.
To settle on a revised methodology for the rankings, Forbes partnered with the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. They settled on five categories of data to determine: quality; drop-out risk (percentage of students who do not graduate within six years); time to graduation; salaries of alumni (ten years after graduation); and value-added college quality per dollar of gross tuitioin and fees (excluding room and board).