Monmouth University was recently featured in Washington Monthly’s annual college guide and rankings, which evaluates 1,421 colleges on access, affordability, outcomes, and service. Monmouth appears on the 2025 College Rankings: Master’s University list as well as the 2025 Best Bang for the Buck Colleges: Northeast list. This year marks Monmouth’s ninth appearance on the Master’s University list, and the fifth year on the Best Bang for the Buck list.
Washington Monthly’s Best Bang for the Buck Colleges list isolates the access, affordability, and outcomes metrics from the main rankings, “evaluating colleges by how well they provide access to nonwealthy students.”
According to Washington Monthly, the methodology behind their main rankings changed substantially for 2025. “Instead of using three equally weighted metrics (social mobility, research, and service) for all colleges and universities … Our main rankings now have four equally weighted portions: access, affordability, outcomes, and community and national service.” As part of the overhaul, Washington Monthly created a separate research ranking for the 139 universities that averaged more than $100 million in research expenditures over the past three years.
Washington Monthly has also introduced a new list that combines all four-year colleges and universities into a single master list of more than 1,400 institutions, the Best Colleges for Your Tuition (and Tax) Dollars. According to the editors, “This allows you to see how any college or university—public or private, big or small, research or teaching—stacks up against all the others.”
View the full rankings for the 2025 College Rankings: Master’s University list and the 2025 Best Bang for the Buck Colleges: Northeast list, and explore the changes to Washington Monthly’s full methodology.