Baylor Rated 45th in 'Money Magazine' Best Buy Survey

WACO, Texas - Money Magazine has rated Baylor University 45th out of more than 1,100 leading U.S. colleges and universities in its annual "Best College Buys" issue. The current rating is a significant climb in the rankings - Baylor was ranked No. 87 in 1996.
The magazine has conducted the survey for eight years, and Baylor has appeared in the top 100 seven of those years. In 1995, the magazine changed its criteria to exclude schools that have the study of religion as an academic requirement, and Baylor was dropped from the list. This exclusion policy was removed last year.
Other Texas schools on this year's list include Rice University (No. 2); the University of Texas at Austin (No. 17); Trinity University (No. 57); Texas A&M (No. 84); and Southwestern University (No. 88). Austin College and the University of Dallas were listed as honorable mentions. For the second consecutive year, California Institute of Technology was listed as the nation's best college buy.
The publication uses 16 criteria to determine the top 150 schools. These include educational quality, high school grade point average and class rank, entrance exam results, faculty resources and deployment, library resources, graduation rates, student services budget and default ratio on student loans. However, tuition plays a major role in determining the rankings.
Baylor's tuition for 1997-98 is $288 per semester hour, the lowest of any major private university in the Southwest and one of the lowest in the nation.