A new ranking shows that GW is gradually improving on its return on investment for students.

Money magazine placed GW at No. 209 on a list of more than 700 of the top colleges in the U.S., an improvement from its No. 214 spot last year. GW was still beat out by more than half of its 14 peer schools this year, according to the report.

The rankings were based on criteria like tuition price, alumni yearly earnings and education quality. Each school also received a letter grade for its “added value,” which looked at “how well students at each school did vs. what would be expected given their economic and academic backgrounds and the institution’s mix of majors.” GW received a B-, and most of the University’s peers took home grades in the same range.

Peer institutions Duke and Vanderbilt universities ranked in the top 5 percent of the schools on the list, earning the 21st and 24th spots, respectively. GW sits above schools like Boston and New York universities, which snagged the 328th and 354th spots, respectively, on the list.

Stanford University landed the rankings’ top spot, followed by Babson College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Not all 1,500 colleges and universities in the U.S. were included in the report. Schools with poor financial health or with low graduation rates were for the most part eschewed from the ranking, with few exceptions, according to Money. Those requirements narrowed the list down to 736 institutions, which were organized by three equally-weighted factors — quality of education, affordability and outcomes, including graduate earnings and career services at the school.