bested Landmark College ($49,793), Columbia ($47,246), and Sarah Lawrence College ($46,924).

Incidentally, all 4 are private and nonprofit.

surpassed Carnegie Mellon ($45,760), Trinity College ($45,730), Wesleyan Univ ($45,628), and Bucknell ($45,378), and others, ending with Webb Inst. ($0).

365 out of the other 3,121 colleges were ruled out due to missing, unknown, or not-applicable values for out-of-state undergrad tuition & fees, e.g., High Point Univ.

1. Tuition and fees are from the Institutional Characteristics Data File 2012-2013 (Provisional Release) as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds).
   

Vassar is in Poughkeepsie, NY, is private and nonprofit, degree-granting, a top-100 happiest school, offers on-campus housing, has a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, accepts the Common Application, requires test scores for undergrad admissions, its top major is English language and literature, is on the semester system, and enrolls from 1,000 to 4,999 students.

• USNews Liberal Arts College ranking (13th place)
• Wall St. Journal feeder school ranking (32nd place)
• PayScale mid-career median salary ranking (184th place)
• Webometrics world ranking (1,272nd place)
• research spending ($3.0M)
• endowment per full-time student ($330,967)
• average full-time teaching salary ($94,331)
• in-state undergrad tuition & fees ($46,270)
• out-of-state undergrad tuition & fees ($46,270)
• average grant aid to undergrads ($38,451)
• cost of a shared room ($5,860)
• average undergrad student loan ($4,026)
• research spending per student ($1,150)
• full-time retention rate (96%)
• undergrads who get financial aid (74%)
• ratio of female full-time freshmen (55.4%)
• undergrads who receive student loans (39%)
• in-state freshmen (26.1%)
• minorities (24.3%)
• undergrads who get Pell grants (23%)
• disabled students (11%)
• tuition & fees increase over three years (10.4%)
• Hispanics (9.8%)
• Asians (8.9%)
• average teaching salary differential (men vs. women, 8.6%)
• foreign students (6.2%)
• Blacks or African Americans (5.4%)
• American Indians or Alaska Natives (0.2%)
• non-resident tuition & fees surcharge (0%)
• average teaching salary differential (women vs. men, -7.9%)
• 25th percentile SAT math score (650)
• 25th percentile SAT reading score (660)
• 25th percentile SAT writing score (650)
• 75th percentile SAT math score (740)
• 75th percentile SAT reading score (750)
• 75th percentile SAT writing score (750)
• alumni who played in the National Football League (0)
• average January temperature (25.6 degrees)
• dorm capacity (2,382)
• first-year applicants (7,908)
• foreign students (165)
• members of the National Academy of Sciences (0)
• men's basketball Final Four appearances (0)
• Rhodes Scholar alumni (2)
• total 75th percentile SAT score (2,240)
• yearly for-credit students (2,651)
• on-campus yearly property crimes per thousand students (3.9)
• students per faculty member (8)
• annual rainfall (46.5 inches)
• diversity and inclusion ratio (0.16)
• elevation (43 meters)

Sources