BestPsychologySchools.com ranks psychology schools and psychology programs according to objective data. This allows our team to rate schools free of subjective or editorial influence. No school pays to be ranked in our system.
Schools included must provide enough information to be considered for our rankings. Students should look at these rankings as a starting point or just a step toward their research for a college degree or program.
Data Sources
BestPsychologySchools.com collects data from the National Center for Education Statistics, CollegeScorecrard.ed.gov, and the National Center for Education Statistics. These federal entities gather, analyze and publish data gathered from schools across the nation. The team at BestPsychologySchools.com also vets and verifies data for quality assurance.
Our team gathers the data from the most recent datasets provided by the entities above for our rankings. BestPsychologySchools.com excludes schools that don’t provide significant data to be considered for our rankings to ensure accurate calculations.
How We Calculate Our Rankings
BestPsychologySchools.com focuses on four categories when ranking schools: affordability, accessibility, reputation, and quality of academics.
According to recent studies, one of the top factors for students choosing online schooling is “affordability”. Thus, our team gives the most weight in our rankings to affordability. Schools with lower net prices receive higher rankings.
Affordability
- The average net price for students awarded grant or scholarship aid
- Federal student aid default loan rate
- Percent of undergraduate students awarded federal student loans*
- The average amount of federal student loans awarded to undergraduate students*
- Percent of full-time, first-time undergraduates awarded any financial aid*
- The average amount of grant and scholarship aid awarded**
- Median debt for graduates (six years after entry)**
Academics
- Full-time retention rate
- Graduation rate
- Student-to-faculty ratio
Reputation
- Percent admitted total
- Admissions yield total
- Mean earnings of graduates six years after enrolling**
Accessibility
- Percentage of students enrolled in online programs at a specific level***
- Percentage of students enrolled online overall***
- Percentage of degrees offered at a specific level
*Used for undergraduate-level rankings only
**Used for graduate-level rankings only
***Used for online rankings only