Best Value / By Major

Best Value Colleges for Agricultural Engineering

Schools ranked by payback period — how quickly you recoup your investment through higher earnings.

26

Schools Ranked

$57,240

Avg. Earnings

1.2 yrs

Best Payback

946

Graduates

How we calculate value: Payback = (4 years of net price) / (major earnings - $35k baseline). A 2-year payback means you recoup your investment in 2 years through higher earnings vs. not attending college.

#	School	Net Price/yr	Major Earnings	Payback
1	Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette, IN · Public	$8,450	$63,997	1.2 yrs
2	University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI · Public	$10,364	$63,749	1.4 yrs
3	University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL · Public	$11,505	$61,303	1.7 yrs
4	University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN · Public	$12,911	$65,238	1.7 yrs
5	University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD · Public	$17,360	$73,164	1.8 yrs
6	University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE · Public	$15,394	$67,324	1.9 yrs
7	North Dakota State University-Main Campus Fargo, ND · Public	$16,071	$67,660	2 yrs
8	University of Georgia Athens, GA · Public	$15,037	$64,791	2 yrs
9	Cornell University Ithaca, NY · Private	$9,785	$51,690	2.3 yrs
10	Iowa State University Ames, IA · Public	$14,641	$60,485	2.3 yrs
11	Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH · Public	$13,273	$57,920	2.3 yrs
12	North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC · Public	$14,424	$55,693	2.8 yrs
13	University of Florida Gainesville, FL · Public	$8,394	$46,478	2.9 yrs
14	California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA · Public	$17,340	$55,964	3.3 yrs
15	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA · Public	$18,372	$57,318	3.3 yrs
16	Kansas State University Manhattan, KS · Public	$16,868	$55,718	3.3 yrs
17	Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX · Public	$17,525	$53,984	3.7 yrs
18	Michigan State University East Lansing, MI · Public	$20,557	$56,415	3.8 yrs
19	Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ · Public	$20,927	$57,318	3.8 yrs
20	University of Wisconsin-River Falls River Falls, WI · Public	$14,528	$49,269	4.1 yrs
21	SUNY College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskill Cobleskill, NY · Public	$18,262	$52,107	4.3 yrs
22	Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA · Public	$27,137	$59,688	4.4 yrs
23	Clemson University Clemson, SC · Public	$20,797	$48,823	6 yrs
24	University of Kentucky Lexington, KY · Public	$16,708	$46,087	6 yrs
25	Oregon State University-Cascades Campus Bend, OR · Public	$20,523	$48,041	6.3 yrs
26	Oregon State University Corvallis, OR · Public	$21,716	$48,041	6.7 yrs

Top Earners in Agricultural Engineering

See schools ranked by earnings alone, without considering cost.

Best Value Rankings

Explore best value colleges across all majors and categories.

Payback uses earnings by major from the College Scorecard's field-of-study file, last updated June 2026, against net price from the June 2026 release. Scorecard publishes the two separately, so they are different vintages.