2026 Best Value Petroleum Engineering Schools in the Great Lakes Region
[Petroleum Engineering](/majors/engineering/petroleum-engineering/) degree programs vary widely in price and payoff across the country. The best values balance affordable tuition against strong post-graduation earnings.
For its 2026 best-value ranking, College Factual looked at 1 schools to find the best return on investment for petroleum engineering students.
What’s on this page:
2026 Best Value Petroleum Engineering Schools in the Great Lakes Region
Below are the schools that deliver the strongest value in petroleum engineering, balancing cost against outcomes.
Best Value Petroleum Engineering Schools
For return on investment in petroleum engineering, no school beat Marietta College this year. Marietta College is a small private not-for-profit school located in the town of Marietta. The average in-state cost of tuition and fees is $39,652. Petroleum Engineering graduates carry a median of $27,000 in student loans. Petroleum Engineering graduates of Marietta College earn a median of $82,205 early in their careers. That is a strong return on a $27,000 median debt. Roughly 79% of applicants are accepted.
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Notes and References
This list is compiled by College Factual (MF_RANKING_2025), 2026 edition. The methodology weighs the cost of a degree against the earnings graduates go on to achieve, drawn primarily from the U.S. Department of Education (IPEDS and College Scorecard).
Ranking method: College Major Best Value · 1 school evaluated.
*Averages shown above reflect the top 1 ranked schools only.
- The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), serves as the core of our data about colleges.
- Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
More about our data sources and methodologies.
