Public colleges and universities account for almost 75 percent of all undergraduate students in the U.S. The best public colleges in New Jersey provide broad access to reputable degree programs, affordable tuition, and sprawling educational communities.
Nearly half of the colleges and universities in this state are private, and tuition rates range from $6,000 to $52,000. With a graduation rate of 97% and a student population of just over 7,000, Princeton University is the state’s most esteemed institution. Narrowing in on the sciences and arts, this Ivy League school offers unique areas of study, including robotics, intelligent systems, and public life. The remaining 31 public colleges and universities range in tuition from $4,000 to $17,000.
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The state’s largest and top-ranked public research institution is Rutgers University. With campuses in New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden as well as smaller locations across the state, Rutgers awards degrees in physics, economics, criminal justice, and psychology. New Jersey also has 11 religiously affiliated colleges and universities, including the oldest diocesan university in the United States, Seton Hall University. This Roman Catholic university has a tuition rate of $42,000 and a student population of over 8,000.
New Jersey, known for its sandy shores and busy expressways, also has more diners than any other state in the U.S., as well as the world’s longest boardwalk, located in Atlantic City. Many influential people, including Buzz Aldrin, Frank Sinatra, and Thomas Edison, have called The Garden State home. Visitors can even peek at some of Edison’s early light bulbs at the Menlo Park Museum. And with 50 higher learning institutions to choose from, students can find a school that suits their career path and budget.
Learn more about earning your degree from one of New Jersey’s highly regarded colleges and universities.
Public and private colleges and universities operate under different business models. Public colleges and universities are owned by the state and receive both state and federal funding to operate. Private colleges and universities are private companies with private funding. If you’re looking at the pros and cons of private vs. public colleges, consider that many public colleges provide diverse course offerings, influential professors, and an excellent return on your investment.
Public colleges are schools that receive most of their funding from tax revenues. As a result, the cost of a bachelor’s degree at a public university is often lower than the equivalent cost at a private college — especially for students attending a public school in their home state. Attending a college in-state is usually the cheapest option. Private universities and colleges can be very competitive with their funding opportunities, so do not simply believe that private colleges are always going to be more expensive. According to National Center for Educational Statistics, the average annual cost (tuition, fees, room and board for full-time students) at a public university was slightly over $20,000. In contrast, private universities cost, on average, nearly $43,000 annually. But in the end, the cost of college comes down to each student’s academic and financial situation.
This list is composed entirely of public colleges and universities that offer bachelor’s degrees. We’ve identified 13 public universities in New Jersey. To be included in our list of the best public colleges in New Jersey, shcools must receive direct funding from the state, be fully accredited, and offer a broad range of bachelor’s degress.
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great! If you are serious about finding the best colleges and universities for a bachelor’s degree, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching and whether their graduates are themselves advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence in their fields of study.
Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Concentrated Influence provides a ranking that is freer from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
To rank the influence of schools, we first determine the influence of scholars and professionals based on the number of citations and publications they have had over the past 10 years. In addition to publications and citations, we consider the web links to and from these sources, and the page views of those sources. We then match the influential people to their alma maters and institutions of employment, so that their influence is attributed to those schools. Our machine-learning Influence Ranking algorithm produces a numerical score of academic achievements, merits, and citations across Wikipedia, wikidata, Crossref, Semantic Scholar and an ever-growing body of data. If you are interested in exploring how and why we rank by influence, explore our methodology in more depth.
Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
76%
Graduation
65%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1075/20
Rutgers University–Camden’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$18K
Acceptance
66%
Graduation
70%
Student body
10K
Median SAT/ACT
1290/27
New Jersey Institute of Technology’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$13K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
68%
Student body
17K
Median SAT/ACT
1155/24
Rowan University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$13K
Acceptance
83%
Graduation
68%
Student body
19K
Montclair State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$16K
Acceptance
51%
Graduation
86%
Student body
9K
Median SAT/ACT
1260/27
The College of New Jersey’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
50%
Student body
12K
Median SAT/ACT
1010/20
Kean University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
74%
Student body
11K
Median SAT/ACT
1115/23
Stockton University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
81%
Graduation
56%
Student body
9K
William Paterson University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
67%
Graduation
84%
Student body
47K
Median SAT/ACT
1320/28
Rutgers University–New Brunswick’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
96%
Graduation
36%
Student body
6K
New Jersey City University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
67%
Graduation
72%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1130/23
Ramapo College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Student body
4K
Thomas Edison State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
74%
Graduation
65%
Student body
11K
Median SAT/ACT
1110/22
Rutgers University–Newark’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Many of our 2022 undergraduate focused rankings look considerably different than 2021. That’s because we took a fundamentally different apporach. For 2021 we utiulized our Concentrated Influence algorithm, designed to take away the size advantage larger schools have when we rank their faculty and alumni’s academic influence. Concentrated influence highlights smaller schools that are proportionally as successful as larger universities at cultivating influential alumni and faculty.
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