Contact: Joe Farris
Mississippi State University is among the nation's 100 "Baccalaureate Bargains" for 2002, according to Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine.
The magazine's periodic ranking of public colleges and universities includes "top quality schools at relative bargain prices."
For the 2002 rankings, the magazine started with the 200 institutions judged most selective among the nation's 600-plus public four-year institutions based on ACT and SAT scores, then whittled the list based on quality measures such as student-faculty ratios and how much an institution spends per student.
Mississippi State came in 99th in the ranking based on a combination of quality and cost, the average percentage of financial need met by aid, and average student debt, among other things. The magazine calculated MSU's total annual cost for an in-state student at $12,876, including room and board and other expenses.
MSU was mistakenly left off the list when Kiplinger's initially published its 2002 rankings in October, but appears in a corrected version in the January 2003 edition.