beat Washington Univ in St Louis ($26,173), Southern Methodist Univ ($24,947), Principia College ($22,717), and Rhodes College ($21,516), and others, ending with Cleveland Chiropractic College ($700).

40 out of the other 246 colleges were ruled out due to missing, unknown, or not-applicable values for average grant aid to undergrads, e.g., Barnes-Jewish College Goldfarb School of Nursing.

1. The data on undergrad loans, financial aid, and Pell grants are from the Student Financial Aid Data File, 2011-12 (Provisional release) as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds).
   
2. Distance calculations between two colleges use a mathematical formula for the distance on a sphere between two points.
   

Hendrix College is in Conway, AR, is private and nonprofit, is United Methodist, degree-granting, offers on-campus housing, has a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, accepts the Common Application, requires test scores for undergrad admissions, its top major is biology/biological sciences, is on the semester system, its top Masters major is accounting, and enrolls from 1,000 to 4,999 students.

• USNews Liberal Arts College ranking (82nd place)
• research spending ($1.4M)
• endowment per full-time student ($106,821)
• average full-time teaching salary ($63,677)
• in-state undergrad tuition & fees ($36,050)
• out-of-state undergrad tuition & fees ($36,050)
• average grant aid to undergrads ($27,101)
• average undergrad student loan ($6,701)
• cost of a shared room ($5,268)
• research spending per student ($984)
• undergrads who get financial aid (100%)
• full-time retention rate (86%)
• ratio of female full-time freshmen (52.8%)
• undergrads who receive student loans (51%)
• in-state freshmen (42.5%)
• undergrads who get Pell grants (22%)
• tuition & fees increase over three years (19.6%)
• average teaching salary differential (men vs. women, 13.2%)
• minorities (11.8%)
• Hispanics (4.8%)
• foreign students (4.4%)
• disabled students (4%)
• Asians (3.4%)
• Blacks or African Americans (3.1%)
• American Indians or Alaska Natives (0.5%)
• non-resident tuition & fees surcharge (0%)
• average teaching salary differential (women vs. men, -11.7%)
• 25th percentile SAT math score (540)
• 25th percentile SAT reading score (550)
• 75th percentile SAT math score (670)
• 75th percentile SAT reading score (680)
• alumni who played in the National Football League (0)
• average January temperature (38.4 degrees)
• dorm capacity (1,210)
• first-year applicants (1,656)
• foreign students (64)
• members of the National Academy of Sciences (0)
• men's basketball Final Four appearances (0)
• Rhodes Scholar alumni (6)
• yearly for-credit students (1,461)
• on-campus yearly property crimes per thousand students (6.84)
• students per faculty member (11)
• annual rainfall (49.1 inches)
• diversity and inclusion ratio (0.11)
• elevation (102 meters)

Sources