Whitman stands as the 20th “Best Value in Liberal Arts Colleges” according to Kiplinger’s 2009 rankings. That marks a significant improvement from last year’s 28th place ranking, an improvement administrators credit to the college’s ongoing commitment to academic quality and affordability.

Only six other west coast schools made the 50 school list and no other Northwest liberal arts college.

Kiplinger’s selected the schools after consulting Peterson’s data on more than  600 private institutions and subsequently adding their own data. Kiplinger’s then ranked each school on academic quality and affordability, with quality accounting for two thirds of the total.

To determine academic quality, Kiplinger’s measured schools’ admission rates, SAT or ACT scores, student to faculty ratio and graduation rates. The affordability measure, then, focused on total cost for the 2009-10 academic year, cost after need-based aid, aid from grants, cost after non-need-based aid, non-need-based aid and average debt at graduation.

The annual rankings will appear in Kiplinger’s December 2009 issue, which hits newstands Nov. 10.