Best Value / By Major

Best Value Colleges for Cognitive Science

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

14

Schools Ranked

$39,314

Avg. Earnings

<1 yr

Best Payback

994

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	Stanford University Stanford, CA · Private	$7,081	$92,632	<1 yr
2	University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA · Private	$12,020	$52,107	2.8 yrs
3	University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA · Public	$13,423	$48,667	3.9 yrs
4	University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA · Public	$12,644	$42,682	6.6 yrs
5	University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA · Public	$14,310	$41,870	8.3 yrs
6	Tufts University Medford, MA · Private	$19,827	$39,369	18.2 yrs
7	Simmons University Boston, MA · Private	$26,374	$37,208	47.8 yrs
8	University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA · Public	$16,019	$33,993	N/A
9	University of California-Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, CA · Public	$15,567	$30,228	N/A
10	University of Georgia Athens, GA · Public	$15,037	$23,693	N/A
11	University of Delaware Newark, DE · Public	$17,260	$19,812	N/A
12	University of California-Merced Merced, CA · Public	$14,261	$28,960	N/A
13	Indiana University-Bloomington Bloomington, IN · Public	$12,369	$33,993	N/A
14	Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD · Private	$8,457	$25,194	N/A

Top Earners in Cognitive Science

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.