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

1 SUNY Maritime College · Throggs Neck · public +$5.71M
2 Molloy College · Rockville Centre · private +$3.58M
3 CUNY Graduate School and University Center · New York · public +$3.16M
4 Upstate Medical University · Syracuse · public +$2.88M
5 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute · Troy · private +$2.80M
6 D'Youville University · Buffalo · private +$2.52M
7 SUNY College of Technology at Delhi · Delhi · public +$2.50M
8 Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology · Flushing · private +$2.36M
9 Wagner College · Staten Island · private +$2.28M
10 Cornell University · Ithaca · private +$1.90M
11 Adelphi University · Garden City · private +$1.88M
12 Clarkson University · Potsdam · private +$1.86M
13 Farmingdale State College · Farmingdale · public +$1.83M
14 CUNY Bernard M Baruch College · New York · public +$1.80M
15 University of Mount Saint Vincent · Bronx · private +$1.75M

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 York — 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.