Ranked, compared, and filtered by real data: costs, outcomes, and admissions
No state comes close to Massachusetts for the sheer density of high-quality higher education. Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Tufts, Northeastern, Boston College, Brandeis, Williams, Amherst, and Smith are all within a two-hour radius of each other.
The concentration of research funding, startup activity, hospitals, and graduate programs in and around Boston has made it one of the most important academic regions in the world, and students at almost any institution in the state benefit from proximity to that ecosystem.
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See how Massachusetts's colleges compare to the national average on the four measures most students and families weigh when deciding where to go: cost, acceptance rates, graduate earnings, and graduation rates.
The colleges in Massachusetts that rank highest by UCD Score, and those that deliver above-national graduate earnings at a below-average net price, two of the strongest signals when choosing a school.
Not every student is looking for the same thing. These six panels rank Massachusetts's colleges by the data that matters most for each path.
Ranked by annual graduates
Ranked by annual graduates
Ranked by annual graduates
Ranked by net price
Ranked by enrollment
Ranked by grad earnings
Which colleges give you the most for what you spend? These eight schools rank highest in Massachusetts by the ratio of 10-year graduate earnings to annual net price.
| # | College | Net Price / yr | Earnings (10yr) | Ratio | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Middlesex Community College Bedford | $2,624 | $50,651 | 19.3× | Excellent |
| 2 | Massachusetts Bay Community College Wellesley Hills | $7,169 | $52,654 | 7.3× | Excellent |
| 3 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge | $20,111 | $143,372 | 7.1× | Excellent |
| 4 | Northern Essex Community College Haverhill | $6,046 | $42,862 | 7.1× | Excellent |
| 5 | Bristol Community College Fall River | $5,547 | $38,663 | 7.0× | Excellent |
| 6 | Springfield Technical Community College Springfield | $5,662 | $36,966 | 6.5× | Excellent |
| 7 | Bunker Hill Community College Boston | $7,818 | $47,618 | 6.1× | Excellent |
| 8 | Massasoit Community College Brockton | $8,460 | $46,111 | 5.5× | Excellent |
ROI Ratio = median earnings 10 years after enrollment ÷ annual net price. Higher is better.
The six fields of study with the most annual graduates across all colleges in Massachusetts, based on IPEDS completion data.
The specific degree programs producing the most graduates across Massachusetts's colleges. A more granular view than the Popular Majors above, useful when you already know roughly what you want to study and want to see where the volume is.
Careers with a strong employment footprint in Massachusetts. What graduates from local colleges actually go on to do. State-level employment is shown where the BLS publishes it; national wage + growth shown alongside.
The cities in Massachusetts with the most colleges, ranked by number of institutions.
Rank every state by the average 10-year earnings of its college graduates and the top of the list is the costly Northeast corridor plus DC, not the South.
Utah crowds 14,137 students into each of its colleges, four times the national norm. These are the states where college options are scarcest per student.
There are 170 colleges that operate a medical school, and they cluster hard. Texas leads with 14, three states hold a fifth of them, and four states have none.
Browse our full directory: every college, major, program, and career we track, all built from verified government data.
Scout uses AI and can make mistakes. Verify important numbers on the page.
