FREOPP 2021 earnings · IPEDS 2023 cost · BEA 2023 cost-of-living · New Hampshire four-year schools, resident pricing · real-earnings-coverage only · every school shown is NPV-positive.

1 Dartmouth College · Hanover · private +$2.47M
2 Southern New Hampshire University · Manchester · private +$1.71M
3 University of New Hampshire College of Professional Studies Online · Manchester · public +$1.55M
4 University of New Hampshire-Main Campus · Durham · public +$1.31M
5 Rivier University · Nashua · private +$1.15M
6 Saint Anselm College · Manchester · private +$790K
7 Plymouth State University · Plymouth · public +$726K
8 Keene State College · Keene · public +$578K
9 Colby-Sawyer College · New London · private +$206K

How this is computed (and what it isn’t)

For each school we run the /worth-it calculator with the home state set to New Hampshire — resident tuition, plus foregone wages, capitalized loan interest, and BEA cost-of-living on the skip-college path. The ranking is the 30-year projected net value of going vs. skipping and investing the difference. It ranks schools, not majors — and the major you pick swings that payoff by over a million dollars on its own.

What it isn’t: a list of “good schools.” It’s a list of good trades at resident pricing. Schools without real FREOPP earnings coverage are excluded rather than estimated; institutions whose earnings roll up from fewer than 3 reported programs are excluded as too thin to rank; schools verified closed since the IPEDS 2023-24 vintage are excluded by hand. Only NPV-positive schools are listed — the point is where the value is, not naming losers.