Washington & Jefferson College is one of the oldest four-year liberal arts schools in the country, founded in 1781. Its campus, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh, is home to some 1,100 full-time undergrads.

While the school is already below the average cost of a degree relative to the other schools on our list, Washington & Jefferson also gives out grants to almost all of its students. W&J offers 33 majors, the five most popular being business and commerce, accounting, economics, psychology and political science. It also offers pre-professional programs and other academic options, such as a dual-degree engineering program, where students spend their first three years at W&J followed by two at a partner engineering school like Columbia or Case Western Reserve and graduate with both a BA and a BS.

As might be expected for a college of its size, W&J has a low student-faculty ratio of 9 to 1 and says that classes have an average of 20 or fewer students. During “JayTerm,” a two-week term in January, students choose a signal topic to study in-depth, and the session is often used to travel abroad with faculty. W&J also has a summer research program called the Magellan Project that gives money to students so they can carry out independent research projects or internships.