beat out by Harvard ($41,555), Williams College ($39,776), Yale ($39,771), and Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art ($39,201).

Incidentally, all 5 require test scores for undergrad admissions.

beat Stanford ($38,522), Vassar ($38,451), Dartmouth ($38,148), and Columbia ($37,934), and others, ending with Montana Bible College ($250).

516 out of the other 3,121 colleges were ruled out due to missing, unknown, or not-applicable values for average grant aid to undergrads, e.g., Samuel Merritt Univ.

1. The data on undergrad loans, financial aid, and Pell grants are from the Student Financial Aid Data File, 2011-12 (Provisional release) as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds).
   

Vanderbilt is in Nashville, TN, is private and nonprofit, is in the Southeastern Conference, research intensive, a top-100 party school, a top-100 happiest school, a member of the American Association of Universities, accepts the Common Application, has a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, has a hospital, has a law school, offers a Doctor of Medicine degree, offers on-campus housing, plays division I/FBS football, requires test scores for undergrad admissions, its top major is economics, is on the semester system, its top Masters major is finance, its top Doctoral major is law, and enrolls from 10,000 to 19,999 students.

• USNews law school ranking (15th place)
• USNews MBA ranking (30th place)
• ARWU world ranking (49th place)
• PayScale mid-career median salary ranking (62nd place)
• Webometrics world ranking (71st place)
• Times Higher Education world ranking (88th place)
• research spending ($389.9M)
• endowment per full-time student ($286,473)
• average full-time teaching salary ($110,076)
• in-state undergrad tuition & fees ($42,118)
• out-of-state undergrad tuition & fees ($42,118)
• average grant aid to undergrads ($38,887)
• research spending per student ($29,466)
• cost of a shared room ($9,028)
• average undergrad student loan ($6,001)
• full-time retention rate (96%)
• undergrads who get financial aid (66%)
• undergrads among full-time students (53.5%)
• ratio of female full-time freshmen (48.9%)
• grad students who are under 25 years old (33.8%)
• average teaching salary differential (men vs. women, 28.3%)
• minorities (19.1%)
• undergrads who get Pell grants (14%)
• undergrads who receive student loans (12%)
• foreign students (9.3%)
• in-state freshmen (9.3%)
• tuition & fees increase over three years (9.2%)
• Blacks or African Americans (7.1%)
• Asians (6%)
• Hispanics (5.7%)
• disabled students (5%)
• undergrads who are 25 years or older (0.3%)
• American Indians or Alaska Natives (0.3%)
• non-resident tuition & fees surcharge (0%)
• average teaching salary differential (women vs. men, -22%)
• 25th percentile SAT math score (710)
• 25th percentile SAT reading score (690)
• 25th percentile SAT writing score (670)
• 75th percentile SAT math score (790)
• 75th percentile SAT reading score (770)
• 75th percentile SAT writing score (770)
• alumni who played in the National Football League (90)
• average January temperature (37.7 degrees)
• dorm capacity (5,448)
• first-year applicants (28,348)
• foreign students (1,226)
• full-time grad students (5,170)
• full-time undergrads (6,731)
• grad students (5,914)
• members of the National Academy of Sciences (7)
• men's basketball Final Four appearances (0)
• Rhodes Scholar alumni (26)
• total 75th percentile SAT score (2,330)
• undergrads (6,796)
• yearly for-credit students (13,234)
• on-campus yearly property crimes per thousand students (1.54)
• students per faculty member (8)
• annual rainfall (47.2 inches)
• diversity and inclusion ratio (0.08)
• elevation (177 meters)

Sources