In choosing the best schools for students pursuing a degree in psychology we look at three major aspects of degree programs: Academic quality, affordability and whether the school is psychology-friendly.
When scoring for academic quality we look at a school’s acceptance rate, enrollment rate, graduation rate and teacher-to-student ratio. We want to find schools with lower acceptance rates and higher enrollment and graduation rates. We give higher marks for schools with relatively low teacher-to-student ratios.
Affordability rankings are based on a combination of cost per term and percent of students receiving financial aid.
Finally, we give a big boost to programs that are accredited by one of a handful of psychology or social work accrediting bodies. See below for more info on accreditation.
All of our numbers that we use in ranking come from The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a public government database of all colleges and universities in the United States.