For the third year in a row, Rice University is #4 on the list of best values in private colleges ranked by Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine.

The rankings for 2010-11, announced today, measure academic quality and affordability. The magazine bases two-thirds of a school's ranking on academic excellence.

Princeton, Yale and Caltech were the top three schools on the list, and Duke University rounded out the top five.

To measure academic quality, Kiplinger looked at the percentage of applicants offered admission; percentage of the freshman class that scored 600 or higher on the verbal and math SATs or 24 or higher on the ACT; student-faculty ratio; and percentage of freshmen who earned a bachelor's degree within four or five years.

Financial measures included total cost (tuition, mandatory fees, room and board, and estimated book expenses); cost after need-based aid is subtracted; percentage of the average financial aid package that came from grants or scholarships; cost after non-need-based aid is subtracted; percentage of all undergraduates without need who received non-need-based aid; and average debt at graduation (based on graduates who took out education loans).

Kiplinger noted that Rice's total annual cost of $46,321 "runs $6,000 to $7,000 less than that of many of its counterparts, including Duke, Stanford and Vanderbilt." The magazine pointed out that Rice reduces that cost by more than half for students who qualify for need-based aid, and it quoted President David Leebron, who noted Rice's "special, historic commitment to be an affordable university."

"With the lowest sticker price of our top-25-ranked universities, along with generous need-based and merit-based aid, Rice lives up to its reputation for affordability," Kiplinger wrote.