Best Public School Bargains: UT, A&M But Not UH

UH: Not in the top 100 bargains

Three Texas schools made the list -- UT-Austin, Texas A&M and UT-Dallas, which is in Richardson but who's asking?

None of the schools really scored all that well -- UT was 14th, A&M was 23rd and UT-D came in 54th.

The schools did even worse for out-of-state students, coming in 27th, 35th and 67th respectively.

Still, at least they made the list of 100 schools. UH didn't.

Why not? Says Kiplinger's:

As with any ranking, our lists exclude schools that do not meet our criteria. We start with data on more than 500 public institutions and sort the schools based on quality measures -- such as the admission rate, the test scores of incoming freshmen, and four- and six-year graduation rates. We then add cost data -- including tuition, fees, room and board, and financial aid for in-state and out-of-state students -- and re-rank the institutions. It is this combination of academic quality and affordability -- not any desire on our part to exclude a particular school -- that determines which schools make our lists for best value.

Well, the tuition wouldn't be much different.....is Kiplinger's dissing UH's "academic quality"?

That's no way to treat a school that's (almost) Tier One!