Cal State Long Beach has been recently listed on the Money.com “Best Colleges in America” list by getting a 4.5 star rating in a possible 5-star system.
34 universities garnered a 5-star rating out of the 736 four-year schools that made the rating criteria. CSULB landed in the next rating category below that, along with almost 200 other schools that all carry the 4.5 star rating.
While the new rating system was designed to prevent determining the overall rankings of the universities, Money.com provided data on a few of the more sought after statistical points to find where the schools rank among them.
Money.com lists the CSULB graduation rate at 81%, which they say is “well above average for all the schools we’ve rated this year”. However, CSULB has an acceptance rate of 41%, which is lower than over 600 of the other schools listed, putting the campus at the lower 20% in that category.
Money.com also lists CSULB as “one of the best bargains in higher education” because the tuition cost is lower than the median cost of all the schools rated, while also being in an area with a higher cost of living.
The only negative point about CSULB that Money.com says directly is that due to the high enrollment of 34,000 undergraduates, it might not be a good fit for people looking for a smaller college experience.
Although difficult to find, the rankings for Cal State Long Beach are still listed online for the years 2022 and 2020.
According to the Money.com top 25 colleges article in 2022, CSULB ranked No. 18. In 2020, the archived profile page for the school on the Money.com website from the list that year ranked the Beach at No. 27 overall.
Money.com recently changed its “Best Colleges in America” list from a ranking based list to a rating list. The editors of the publication decided that a simple ranking system did not provide good information to prospective college students who may have a variety of challenges or goals that factor into the school they choose.
With a rating system instead, the editors felt that consumers could get a good idea of where their perspective university stands, then look at the accompanying data closer based on what they want in their higher education goals.
To determine a university’s rating, researchers gathered data in three broad categories.
Education quality accounted for 30% of the grading weight, which looked at things like graduation rates, peer quality, instructor access and financial troubles.
Affordability accounted for 40% of the grading weight, which analyzed debt, ability to pay debt, net degree price paid broken when down by income brackets and other payment related criteria.
Finally, educational outcomes were the third analytical point addressed, with the final 30% of the grading weight. Here, mostly third party data regarding employment, earnings, economic mobility and other employment variables were looked at.
After all a university’s categories, and sub-categories within them, are analyzed and scored, the data is processed using a Z-score method. The Z-score method is a statistical calculation tool meant to reduce a largely varied score set into a standardized one for easy ranking based on a single score that accounts for all the variables.
Once the Z-scores for each university have been calculated, the schools with similar scores are grouped together, and the ratings are conferred on a group by group basis based on the score range the group represents.
Money.com, long associated with Time Magazine and published as Money, was purchased in 2019 by a Puerto Rican based advertising company, Ad Practitioners LLC, which itself was founded in 2016 in part by former Google executive Greg Powel.