Other great values that aren't on our list

Our rankings focus on traditional four-year schools with broad-based curriculums. Unfortunately, that meant we had to leave out some excellent schools with special programs.

For example, the military and service academies -- Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Merchant Marine and Navy -- were all near the top of our list for academic quality. And they charge no tuition and pay students a stipend to attend.

Two other military schools, The Citadel, in Charleston, S.C., and Virginia Military Institute, in Lexington, Va., also have high academic standards. The Citadel charges $11,600 for in-state cadets in tuition, fees, and room and board and $21,300 for out-of-state residents. VMI charges $12,700 for in-state students and $26,900 for others.

Applicants to all of the military schools must pass physical exams and physical-fitness tests. And applicants to the federal academies generally must obtain congressional or military nominations and serve in the military after graduation. For those reasons, we did not include the schools in our rankings.

We also had to leave out the 11 senior colleges of the City University of New York -- among them City, Hunter and Queens colleges. In-state tuition and fees are about $4,300, and after need-based aid the cost generally drops to less than $1,500. But the schools do not provide housing, so their costs could not be compared with other colleges.

Two other schools with strong academic records were not included because they offer a limited curriculum. The North Carolina School of the Arts offers degrees only in the visual and performing arts, and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry offers degrees in majors tailored to environmental study.

And another excellent school didn't make our list because it is both a public and a private institution. Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., is best known as a member of the Ivy League, and four of its colleges -- Architecture, Arts & Sciences, Engineering and Hotel Administration -- are part of the privately endowed university.

But three Cornell undergraduate colleges are land-grant state schools that charge much lower tuition. New York State residents who are students in the colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Human Ecology, and Industrial and Labor Relations pay about $17,400 for tuition and fees. Out-of-state residents pay $30,400 -- just a grand less than students who attend the university's private colleges.