Smart Money published The Best Colleges for Making Money in December 2008.  The article discusses the relationship between tuition costs and graduates’ earning power.  

In the end, our scorecard may be music to the ears of many state-school admissions deans-not to mention a lot of struggling parents. After all, who would’ve guessed that Texas A & M, No. 1 in our survey, would deliver a payback more than two and a half times that of Harvard? Or that the state universities of Delaware and Rhode Island would beat out every Ivy in the ranking?

Indeed, those unheralded public universities turn out to be a far better deal than virtually all the privates we surveyed. The Ivies in general? They deliver nowhere near the payback on tuition that most parents staring at a six-figure bill over four years might expect.

The results speak for themselves.  But let me get on my soapbox - one I can still afford because I’m still in high school and am speaking with the “arrogance of youth.”   

When evaluating which school to attend, the factors that I will weigh are (in this order):

1. Faculty - will I be challenged in their class?  Is this the faculty who I want to network with for the rest of my life? Will I have a memorable experience from the courses I take?
2. Culture - will I grow as a person by becoming a part of that college?  What unique cultural experiences can I have at that university? 
3. Brand - will I be proud putting the college name on my resume? Will I be proud to wear the school apparel? or will I be embarrassed to wear the school t-shirt and own the school bumper sticker?
4. Facilities - are the campus and library facilities the best in class?  Will I love studying at the library?  or will I dread it? Will the dorms be satisfactory for living?  
5. Cost - can I afford it?  can I get financial aid? 

Some decisions can be boiled down to an ROI analysis, but I don’t think choosing a college is one of them.