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

1 University of Virginia-Main Campus · Charlottesville · public +$2.63M
2 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University · Blacksburg · public +$2.61M
3 George Mason University · Fairfax · public +$1.93M
4 James Madison University · Harrisonburg · public +$1.76M
5 Virginia Military Institute · Lexington · public +$1.46M
6 Washington and Lee University · Lexington · private +$1.39M
7 ECPI University · Virginia Beach · private +$1.33M
8 Marymount University · Arlington · private +$1.31M
9 Eastern Mennonite University · Harrisonburg · private +$1.29M
10 Old Dominion University · Norfolk · public +$1.07M
11 William & Mary · Williamsburg · public +$1.01M
12 Liberty University · Lynchburg · private +$807K
13 Radford University · Radford · public +$803K
14 Longwood University · Farmville · public +$678K
15 Christopher Newport University · Newport News · public +$646K

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

For each school we run the /worth-it calculator with the home state set to Virginia — 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.