MN private colleges worth the money

Personal finance magazines tend to be heavy on the list-making. Best places to live. Best places to retire. Best places for families. And many times Minnesota locations rate highly on these lists.

The December issue of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine is no exception. Four Minnesota colleges make the top half of the magazine's list of 100 best private college values:

11. Carleton College, Northfield, Minn.

23. Macalester College, St. Paul, Minn.

27. St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn.

47. Gustavus Adolphus College, Saint Peter, Minn.

St. John's University and College of St. Benedict ranked in the 70s.

The ranking takes academic quality and price tag into account, weighted more heavily on the academic quality side. A detailed explanation of the methodology is available, but as far as cost is concerned, the magazine looked at cost before and after both need-based and non-need based aid as well as the amount of aid that comes from grants and the average debt a student has at graduation.

At first glance, the $50,000 plus price tags on a Carleton or Macalester are intimidating. But both give close to $30,000 in need and non-need based aid with the bulk of it going towards need. The average student graduates with less than $20,000 in debt.

We're talking about $10,000 less than the $27,467 in student debt that's saddling the average Minnesota graduate, Class of 2009.

A peek at the Project on Student Debt's data on debt load by school is eye-opening. Average debt at the University of Minnesota? $26,516. Winona State? $27,190. Minneapolis College of Art and Design? $42,346.