The 15 best colleges for your money

It's hard to estimate the impact your chosen college - or your children's - will have on your life.

However, that doesn't mean we can't try.

To come up with the "best colleges for your money "- defined as schools that offer "a great education, at an affordable price, that prepares students for rewarding careers" - MONEY ranked 705 four-year colleges in the US with over 500 students and a median-or-above graduation rate on 24 factors within three broad categories:

• educational quality
• affordability
• alumni success

See the full methodology at MONEY.

Below, we've included MONEY's estimated price of the 2016-2017 school year without aid, the estimated price of the same year with the average amount of aid, and the "early career earnings" (a weighted calculation taken from various reports of graduate earnings five and ten years after graduation) for each of the top 15 schools.

See the full ranking of 705 schools at MONEY.