<p>@bluedog, both Kiplinger and USN&WR rank such things (ranked by ave. cost). In the USN 2010 “National Universities” section the rankings were …</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
Columbia and
Dartmouth</p>
<p>after that there is a steep increase of several thousand $/year …</p>
<p>For LACs, the best were Williams, Amherst and Pomona …</p>
<p>edit – I believe Columbia tweaked their system AFTER the data used by USN for this issue … so they now might be higher ranked.</p>