(MONEY Magazine) – The 10 schools that lead MONEY's third annual ranking of best college buys represent a remarkable cross section of American higher education: technical institutes and liberal arts colleges, intimate schools and enormous ones, spanning the nation from New Jersey to Florida, New Mexico to Washington State. They all, however, meet our definition of a higher education bargain, delivering outstanding educations at reasonable prices. (For a detailed explanation of our methodology, see page 64.) Of course, no ranking, however varied, can by itself steer you to the right school for your child. But the college profiles on the following pages, along with the lists of 100 best values (page 67) and top regional values (pages 68 and 69), are excellent places to begin your search.

Rice University 1 For the second year, Rice tops MONEY's list of best college buys -- and that's no fluke. After all, William Marsh Rice founded the school in Houston in 1891 with two goals: Provide excellent education and keep the cost low. (Until 1964, Rice charged no tuition.) And those happen to be the same principles that guide our value rankings.

To help Rice fulfill its mission, the founder supplied a generous endowment that has grown, with the help of other gifts, to $1.25 billion. On a per- student basis, Rice had the fifth largest endowment in U.S. higher education in 1991. So instead of slashing faculty and scratching courses, Rice has added 30 teaching positions and created six interdisciplinary programs since 1987. Tuition and fees climbed 10% this year to $8,825, but that's still about half the cost of an Ivy League school. And many students pay much less than that: 82% of the 2,667 undergrads receive financial aid, and Rice gives grants from its own funds to about 60%. Rice's academic strong points include architecture, business, engineering and science. All undergraduates are taught by professors in classes averaging just 18 students; the student/faculty ratio is a cozy 9 to 1. ''Faculty members also advise students, participate in social events, and, in many cases, host them,'' boasts Rice president George Rupp. Students live in eight residential colleges that serve both as dormitories and centers of social life on the tree-lined, 300-acre campus. Rice students seem to find their schooling inspirational: Nearly 60% of them begin pursuing advanced degrees within a year of graduation, more than double the national average. One sour note: The school's vaunted honor code, which allows students to take unsupervised exams, was tarnished last year when 28 students were caught cheating on a science quiz -- the worst violation in the code's 75-year history. The offenders were punished with sharply lower grades. The scandal led to calls from some students to revise the system; administrators say they will leave it in place but do more to educate students about it.

New College 2 New College, on 120 acres of property that includes the old Ringling family estate in Sarasota, has no mandatory classes, distribution requirements or letter grades. But don't let the sunny locale and lack of structure fool you: Getting a degree there is no day at the beach. The school's 515 undergrads must design their own academic programs in conjunction with faculty sponsors. Detailed written evaluations accompany their grades of satisfactory or unsatisfactory. And to graduate, students must complete three independent study projects, write a senior thesis and pass an oral baccalaureate exam. ''A lot of high school students hear 'no grades' and think that means no structure, no discipline,'' says Gordon Michalson Jr., the former chairman of Oberlin College's religion department, who became dean of New College in August. ''New College requires self-supported structure and self-discipline. That's a tall order.'' Clearly, many students find those demands overwhelming. Only 47% of entering freshmen earn their degrees in five years, which is below the national average of 55% and very low for a school of this caliber. Yet those who do hang on seem to acquire a taste for learning: New College ranked sixth in the nation in a survey of schools whose grads went on to earn doctorates. Founded in 1960 as a private college, the school is rich in educational resources: The student/faculty ratio is 11 to 1, 94% of the teachers have doctorates, and average class size is 10 for juniors and seniors, 20 for freshmen and sophomores. Financial problems forced the school to become part of the University of South Florida in 1975. Thanks to state appropriations and support from the New College Foundation, an independent fund-raising group that donates an average of $1,400 per student annually, New College can give Florida residents a private-school education for a mere $1,855 a year, while charging out-of-staters, who represent 48% of the student body, $7,566.

University of Washington 3 The University of Washington in Seattle draws much of its strength from the area's growing economy. For example, its top programs include aerospace and engineering, which send 15% to 25% of their grads to work at nearby Boeing each year. The forestry program benefits from joint ventures with the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service. And gifts from a local resident, Harvard dropout William Gates III, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft Corp., helped to fund UW's new molecular biotechnology department. UW also has a knack for attracting federal research and training grants. In 1990 it pulled in $263 million, ranking first among public universities and third overall. The fruits of this funding are shared by 25,000 undergrads on the 680-acre campus set between two lakes in a residential Seattle neighborhood. Classes can be redwood-size: A school spokesman boasts that several introductory lectures now have only 450 students. Advanced courses, however, usually number no more than 55 for freshmen and 18 for upperclassmen. Admission standards are flexible. In 1992, a Washingtonian with moderately good SAT scores of 1,000, for example, would have needed a grade point average of 3.26 (out of 4) to secure a spot. An out-of-stater with the same SAT scores would have required a 3.85 GPA. Tuition and fees are $2,265 for residents and $6,336 for nonresidents. Hikers and skiers find the nearby Cascade and Olympic mountains ideal for strenuous outings. And there's a lively rock scene in town too. The Seattle sound is known as grunge, and Nirvana is one of the many bar bands that have made it big. For out-of-staters, though, social life can be a challenge. About 70% of the students commute from home or nearby apartments, leaving the campus eerily quiet on many weekends -- except during football season when the Huskies are playing at home.

Hanover College 4 Founded in 1827, Hanover College, a private liberal arts school in southeastern Indiana, is proudly out of step with current educational trends. Unlike many colleges today, Hanover is big on requirements: All students must take a core curriculum of 16 courses, including philosophy, theology and four semesters of foreign language. Seniors must pass comprehensive exams in their majors to graduate. Many professors record attendance and lower the grades of students who cut too many classes. In a typical course, students must write two or three papers and take a similar number of exams each semester. The 1,070 men and women enrolled here seem to thrive on the rigor (they average 1,055 on the SAT), as well as the school's strong sense of academic community. Nearly all the students and 60% of the faculty live on campus, which is dominated by handsome, Georgian-style buildings. The student/faculty ratio is 14 to 1. An ample endowment of $78 million -- per student, it's in the top 10% nationwide -- helps to keep costs low: Tuition, fees, room and board total $10,225 a year. Hanover, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, extends its belief in discipline to social life. Alcohol is banned on campus, and overnight guests of the opposite sex are not permitted in the dorms, although students say these strictures are frequently breached. All fraternities and sororities, where 40% of the students live, have resident house mothers or fathers. Students and administrators agree that in the rural town of Hanover (pop. 2,000) on the Ohio River you have to make your own fun. Lively Louisville is only about an hour's drive away. Although school officials say they're seeking more diversity in the student body, Hanover is far from a melting pot: 60% of entering freshmen are Hoosiers, and 25% come from neighboring Kentucky and Ohio. Only 2.3% are African American or Hispanic.

California Institute of Technology 5 If Caltech needed to advertise, its motto might be ''Expensive, but Worth It.'' Tuition and fees total $15,160, making Caltech the most expensive school of our top 10. But its substantial resources more than justify the cost. For starters, the Pasadena science powerhouse boasts an exceptionally low student/ faculty ratio of 5 to 1. And what faculty! What students! All the teachers have Ph.D.s (the average nationally is 67%), and the students boast an average math SAT score alone of 760, vs. the U.S. average of 474. No wonder that between professors and alumni there are 20 Nobel prizewinners. Caltech provides a galaxy of first-rate labs and computer facilities where more than 60% of undergrads conduct independent research projects, such as designing a robot vacuum cleaner and studying various aspects of California's frequent earthquakes. To widen their horizons, students must take several courses in the humanities and the social sciences -- in fact, they can major in them, although only about 1% ever do. Anyway, what career would be suitable for a social science major from Caltech -- studying poverty among robots? Not that the campus is peopled solely by humorless grinds. Student inventiveness shows its lighter side in a long tradition of pranks that last year included putting figures of Woodstock and Snoopy on the hands of the campus' largest clock. School officials have been trying with mixed results to recruit more women and minorities to alter the complexion of this white male bastion: Just 2% of the student body is black and only 25% is female. Last year, in response to complaints from women students and teachers, school officials agreed to create a campus women's center and to draw up a new sexual-harassment policy.

Trenton State College 6 Founded in 1855 as a teacher's college, Trenton State has since expanded its curriculum considerably. Fittingly, however, the practice of teaching is still a strong point. A professor sits at the head of every classroom -- there are no graduate assistants -- and the student/faculty ratio is an enviable 15 to 1. ''A large lecture is a rarity,'' says president Harold Eickhoff. ''We just don't do that here.'' The average class has about 20 students, and many are even smaller. Teaching and English are popular majors, but the hottest field of study is biology -- reflecting both the large number of pharmaceutical companies in New Jersey and Trenton State's creation, in 1990, of a seven-year B.S./M.D. program in conjunction with the New Jersey School of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark. With most students coming from New Jersey (last year the figure was 93% of the 6,018 undergrads), a long-running joke has it that TSC stands for The Suitcase College, because so many young scholars packed their bags and headed home on weekends. Today, more students stick around, thanks to new housing -- a $22 million dorm and student center opened in February -- and the fun of cheering for winning Division III football and basketball teams. Last year, the state slashed TSC's budget by $1.2 million, thereby forcing the school to boost tuition and fees by 4.5% and to add a special $500 charge it calls a fee for quality. That brought the college's tuition and fees to $3,250 for residents and $4,600 for out-of-staters. No faculty positions were cut, but the vocational and business education programs are being eliminated this fall.

Georgia Institute of Technology 7 When Georgia Tech opened its doors in Atlanta in 1888, students took classes by day and at night donned overalls to rebuild city cable-car wheels to pay their tuition. That machine shop has since closed, but Georgia Tech's hands-on approach is still reflected in its factory-style architecture, its strong engineering department and its co-op job program. About a third of the school's 9,487 undergraduates participate in the co-op plan, alternating quarters of study with jobs at local companies that pay them an average of $8,790 a year. The university also boasts a toolbox full of traditions, including an annual contest to build a flying robot and a Ramblin' Wreck parade, for which students create outlandish motorized sculptures. Finding a spot at Georgia Tech is getting tougher: Applications were up almost 20% last year, allowing admissions officials to be choosier. As a result, the average SAT score for entering freshmen jumped 30 points this year to a demanding 1,226. The school does have a few weaknesses, however. Only 69% of all undergraduates who enrolled in 1985, for example, earned their degrees within six years, in part because of what one official calls the school's boot-camp atmosphere created by professors who make courses especially tough to weed out weak students. Moreover, the campus in Atlanta's bustling business district has only enough dorm rooms to accommodate 45% of the students; the remainder live in nearby apartments. To make the school friendlier, officials are hiring more professors to reduce the student/faculty ratio from 21 to 1, to 17 to 1 by 1995. They've also added a new theater and are sprucing up the campus for the 1996 Summer Olympics. The best news for undergrads: Apartments built to house the athletes will become dorms when the games end.

Rutgers College 8 Chartered in 1766 as a private liberal arts college, Rutgers is America's eighth oldest institution of higher learning. A part of the state university of New Jersey since 1945, the college consists of two sharply contrasting campuses, both with dorms and classrooms, which face each other across the Raritan River, about 35 miles from New York City. The College Avenue branch in New Brunswick is leafy and traditional, with many of its closely spaced buildings dating from the 19th century. At the larger Busch campus in Piscataway, the motif is eclectic modern sprawl. Since most of the 8,400 students take classes on both sides of the river, they learn to do last-minute cramming on the school-run shuttle buses that cross the Raritan every 10 minutes. The quality of the classes justifies the inconvenience of a split campus. Over the past 10 years, the state system has pumped money into hiring better professors and beefing up research facilities at all of its colleges; at Rutgers, the student/faculty ratio is 17 to 1. And the college has seen about a 24% increase in applications since 1981, which has allowed admissions officials to choose brainier students. In 1991, the average freshman had SAT scores of 1,153 and was from the top 12% of his or her high school class; the comparable figures from five years ago were 1,040 and the top 15%. (There are no set admission standards, but New Jerseyans receive preference and represent 90% of the student body.) The rise in academic achievement has been more than matched by the increase in tuition and fees, which have nearly tripled since 1982 to $4,040 for residents and $7,399 for nonresidents. Last year's increase, though, was only 5%, the lowest hike in 20 years and well below the national public-school average of 14%. New Brunswick and Piscataway are home to nine colleges with a total of 33,000 students, and the local bars do a lively business, especially on Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends during the school year.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 9 Students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are as close to college heaven as they may ever be. The magnificent 729-acre main campus features charming antebellum buildings connected by red-brick walkways and wide lawns shaded by giant ivied oak and holly trees. The campus is southern, historic, spacious and serene, and it is ringed by bars that are southern, modern, packed and raucous. For some students, weekend partying begins Thursday night, making attendance at Friday classes somewhat spotty. Among other rituals of student life: taking a cue from loyal alumni and dressing in finery for football games, regardless of the heat, and going crazy at basketball games. (The Tarheels have reached the NCAA regional finals for 12 straight years, led three times by a geography major in the class of '86 named Michael Jordan.) The nation's oldest public university -- it enrolled its first student in 1795 -- Chapel Hill has lost $15.4 million in state funding over the past two years, equal to 4.6% of its budget. And last year the state postponed a faculty raise, leading to concern that some star professors may decide to depart. Particularly strong departments include chemistry, history, business and journalism. In-state tuition and fees are still low: $1,284 a year. Students from other areas pay a reasonable $7,868 -- when they can get in, that is. Because the state decrees that 82% of freshmen must be North Carolinians, Chapel Hill ends up accepting only one in seven out-of-state applicants. Above the introductory level, most classes have 35 or fewer students. Nonetheless, some students complain that professors are more passionate about pursuing their research than teaching. To have more contact with the faculty, students might try to enter the honors program (the average honors student has SAT scores of 1,360 and ranked seventh in his or her high school class), where seminars are limited to 15 or fewer students and lectures average about 25. Or they can simply be aggressive about seeking out teachers for additional discussions after class and during their scheduled office hours. ''It's really up to you,'' says an upperclassman who has managed to make close connections with several teachers. ''You can make it an Ivy League experience or you can get lost.''

New Mexico Tech 10 Teamwork is a strong point at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (better known as New Mexico Tech). Students routinely do research with professors. Advanced classes are invariably small -- there's one faculty member for every 11 students -- and even university president Laurence H. Lattman spends time in the classroom, teaching an introductory geology course in the fall. Students also benefit from the school's affiliation with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is located on campus, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, 170 miles north. These powerful resources come at a bargain price: In-state students (65% of the undergrads) pay $1,666 in tuition and fees, out-of-staters $5,366. But to | take advantage of the deal, applicants must be dedicated techies. The strongest programs are in astrophysics, earth and atmospheric sciences, and petroleum and mining engineering. While the school offers 21 majors, all are in scientific and technical fields, and every undergraduate degree is a bachelor of science, rather than bachelor of arts. The typical entering freshman has a grade point average of 3.31 (out of 4) and a combined ACT score of 26.2. The verdant main campus can be described only as an oasis -- 320 acres of greenery, a product of sprinkler technology, in the heart of the Chihuahua desert, 75 miles south of Albuquerque. The campus has its own 7,200-yard championship golf course; its own mountain, 7,243-foot Socorro Peak, site of a former silver mine that the geology department uses for seismic studies; and 20,000 acres of desert where it conducts research -- much of it classified military work. Tech students soon get used to loud explosions. That may help explain why some students complain that Tech's atmosphere is more suited to weapons research than to more traditional collegiate activities such as dating and carousing. Men outnumber women by 3 to 1, and Socorro (pop. 9,000, one movie theater) is no one's idea of a great college town. But the rugged southwestern setting appeals strongly to those who love hiking, rock climbing, mountain biking or skiing.