There’s no sugar coating it: This is a particularly stressful time to be a high school student (or the parents of one) selecting a college. In addition to weighing academic fit, net cost (after school aid) and the career prospects of graduates, you need to consider a college’s financial condition and which of its programs might be at risk from a wave of cost-cutting that could become a tsunami.

Politics are increasingly a consideration, too, both in terms of how President Donald Trump’s assault on “woke” colleges, federal research funding and foreign students might affect a specific school and in terms of how comfortable a student (or parents) feel with a particular community or state in these polarized times.

“No Florida. No Texas.” That’s what veteran Atlanta-based college counselor Mark Stucker, founder of School Match 4U, has been hearing more often from progressive families. Even before Trump reclaimed the White House, they were turned off by those two states’ high-profile Republican governors and their meddling in state university affairs. Meanwhile, Stucker’s clients from Ohio, Texas and other red states worry about protests getting out of control on “woke” blue state campuses. While politics are playing a growing role, Stucker also neatly puts them in perspective: Over the last 15 years he has seen growing student interest in “football and fun and warm weather” and parental interest in whether, after college, students “will be gainfully employed with a good salary.’’

As we prepared Forbes’ new America’s Top Colleges list, we looked at the numbers and talked to experts, to come up with useful pointers on how to choose a college. Most are tried and true. But there are some new twists for the age of Trump.

Since Forbes began ranking colleges in 2008, our list has been based entirely on academic, financial and career outcomes (including alumni salaries and extraordinary achievements in business, science, government and the arts). Our methodology, updated in 2021, uses 14 metrics, drawn from government, private sources and Forbes’ own lists, to rank the 500 best four-year, bachelor’s-degree-granting colleges in the United States. We give extra credit to schools that help lower-income students achieve the American dream.

Why don’t we consider reputation, entering test scores, or how big an endowment a college has? Realistically, those factors are baked into outcomes, affecting who gets hired where and, for example, how much debt students graduate with. Both alumni networks and a school’s reputation make a difference when it comes to cracking the internship and job market. Employers can rightly assume that graduates of #1 ranked Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the first schools to get rid of its “test-optional” policy after the pandemic, have smarts (at least as measured by standardized tests) and have survived rigorous classes. (MIT snagged the top spot in part because of the large number of its graduates who go on to earn PhDs and/or high salaries.)

“For the type of family that we work with, especially since they’re high net worth to ultra high net worth, they take into account not just the current political climate, but the longer term, for lack of a better word, return on investment of their child’s education,’’ says Adam Nguyen, founder of Ivy Link and a Harvard Law and Columbia University (undergrad) alum. “So it’s less about the four years being there, which are important years, but it’s the lifetime value of that education, of the brand name of the institution.’’

Focusing on return on investment (ROI) is even more important for students who don’t have rich parents paying and paving their way. In fact, a good reason to focus on outcomes is that it surfaces less well known gems–schools which churn out hard working, smart grads who are prized by employers, particularly in their geographic regions. That’s why we now also produce the New Ivies list, which features schools such as the Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus. It has risen to #32 on our overall list, and #7 on our Top Public Colleges list by emphasizing job placement, not exclusivity. Word does get around. For the fall of 2025 freshman class, Georgia Tech accepted

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