The Most Underrated Colleges in America

Walter Hickey/BIFuture income isn't the only factor that should determine college choice, but it may be the most important one.

So how good are the famous college rankings from U.S. News & World Report at predicting future income? It turns out there are some majorly underrated and overrated schools.

We plotted U.S. News' ranking of the best colleges against PayScale's mid-career salary rank to identify the outliers (read the full methodology here).

University of Massachusetts Lowell emerged as the most underrated school, heading a list of state schools and lesser-known tech schools.





#10 Missouri University of Science & Technology

Ranked #250 in our composite of U.S. News's college and university lists.
Ranked #70 in PayScale's mid-career salary list.
Flickr/steevithak
Missouri S&T; is known for its engineering programs, with majors like aerospace engineering, mining engineering, petroleum engineering, and engineering management. But students can also major in the humanities, social sciences, arts, sciences, or business.

The school has done well in several national engineering design competitions and many graduates go on to work in lucrative engineering fields, earning an average mid-career salary of $95,100.