by our College Data Analytics Team
College Factual analyzes over 2,000 colleges and universities in its annual rankings and ranks them in a variety of ways, including most diverse, best overall quality, best for non-traditional students, and much more.
Boston College was awarded 457 badges in the 2024 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is finance & financial management.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Boston College landed the #60 spot in College Factual's 2024 ranking of best overall colleges in the United States. The higher ed experts analyzed 2,217 colleges and universities across the nation to determine this ranking. This puts it in the top 5% of all schools in the nation.
Boston College is also ranked #8 out of 63 schools in Massachusetts.
Boston College has a very low acceptance rate of 19%, making it one of the most selective out of all the colleges and universities in the nation. It's probably a good idea to apply to other schools in addition to Boston College just in case you don't make the cut.
About 30% of students accepted to Boston College submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 700 and 750. Math scores were between 720 and 780.
The student to faculty ratio at Boston College is about average at 14 to 1. This ratio is often used to gauge how many students might be in an average class and how much time professors will have to spend with their students on an individual level. The national average for this metric is 15 to 1.
Another measure that is often used to estimate how much access students will have to their professors is how many faculty members are full-time. The idea here is that part-time faculty tend to spend less time on campus, so they may not be as available to students as full-timers.
The full-time faculty percentage at Boston College is 66%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 95% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Boston College enough to come back for another year. This is a fair bit higher than the national average of 68%. That's certainly something to check off in the good column about the school.
The on-time graduation rate for someone pursuing a bachelor's degree is typically four years. This rate at Boston College for first-time, full-time students is 90%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Boston College.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 9,780 undergraduates at Boston College with 9,571 being full-time and 209 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10,212 | $7,075 | $17,098 | $23,632 | $50,368 |
The net price is calculated by adding tuition, room, board and other costs and subtracting financial aid.Note that the net price is typically less than the published for a school. For more information on the sticker price of Boston College, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
It's not uncommon for college students to take out loans to pay for school. In fact, almost 66% of students nationwide depend at least partially on loans. At Boston College, approximately 33% of students took out student loans averaging $3,581 a year. That adds up to $14,324 over four years for those students.
The student loan default rate at Boston College is 0.9%. This is significantly lower than the national default rate of 10.1%, which is a good sign that you'll be able to pay back your student loans.
Get more details about the location of Boston College.
Contact details for Boston College are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 |
| Phone: | 617-552-8000 |
| Website: | www.bc.edu/ |
| Facebook: | https://www.facebook.com/BostonCollege |
| Twitter: | http://twitter.com/BostonCollege |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Economics | 372 | $64,785 |
| Finance & Financial Management | 348 | $74,320 |
| General Biology | 231 | $38,609 |
| Political Science & Government | 231 | $45,951 |
| Communication & Media Studies | 168 | $49,055 |
| Marketing | 135 | $58,593 |
| Computer Science | 128 | $89,714 |
| General Psychology | 127 | $37,262 |
| Accounting | 121 | $69,899 |
| Clinical, Counseling & Applied Psychology | 118 | $41,046 |
Online learning is becoming popular at even the oldest colleges and universities in the United States. Not only are online classes great for returning adults with busy schedules, they are also frequented by a growing number of traditional students.
In 2020-2021, 7,240 students took at least one online class at Boston College. This is a decrease from the 12,621 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-2021 | 7,240 | 650 |
| 2019-2020 | 12,621 | 1,505 |
| 2018-2019 | 728 | 285 |
| 2017-2018 | 505 | 189 |
| 2016-2017 | 435 | 140 |
If you’re considering Boston College, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Boston College? Pit them head to head with College Combat, our free interactive tool that lets you compare college on the features that matter most to you!
Footnotes
*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.
References
More about our data sources and methodologies.