July 2020
The Western United States may be home to large research universities and tech-heavy places like Silicon Valley, but the West also happens to be chock-full of smaller colleges where the liberal arts — that is, the study of classical academic fields like the humanities and natural sciences — prove key to success in all kinds of academic and career endeavors.
Ranking Methodology:To find the 30 best liberal arts colleges in the West, we started by considering only those colleges in the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. There are far more than 30 liberal arts colleges in the West, so we narrowed down our list by considering factors such as:
- National rankings (40%)
– Freshmen retention rates (20%)
– Unique curriculum (30%)
– Membership in a college consortium (5%)
– Historical significance (5%)
Though we didn't directly consider the 4-year cost of attending these liberal arts colleges, we did order our 30 best liberal arts colleges in the West based on their average 20-year net return on investment, as decided by PayScale.
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