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.
Carnegie Mellon University was awarded 118 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is multi / interdisciplinary studies.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Carnegie Mellon is ranked #8 out of 2,152 schools in the nation for overall quality on College Factual's 2025 Best Colleges list. This puts it in the top 1% of all schools in the nation! This is an improvement over the previous year, when Carnegie Mellon held the #9 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
Carnegie Mellon also holds the #2 spot on the Best Colleges in Pennsylvania ranking.
With an acceptance rate of 11%, Carnegie Mellon is one of the most selective schools in the country. Good grades and high test scores alone may not be enough to get you into the school, so do your best to submit a stellar application.
About 51% of students accepted to Carnegie Mellon submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 720 and 770. Math scores were between 770 and 800.
The student to faculty ratio at Carnegie Mellon is an impressive 5 to 1. That's quite good when you compare it to the national average of 15 to 1. This is a good sign that students at the school will have more opportunities for one-on-one interactions with their professors.
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 Carnegie Mellon University is 92%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 97% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Carnegie Mellon University 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.
Students are considered to have graduated on time if they finish their studies within four years. At Carnegie Mellon the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 80%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Carnegie Mellon University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 6,622 undergraduates at Carnegie Mellon with 6,341 being full-time and 281 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $12,082 | $15,139 | $16,532 | $24,893 | $52,012 |
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 Carnegie Mellon, 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 Carnegie Mellon, approximately 42% of students took out student loans averaging $6,525 a year. That adds up to $26,100 over four years for those students.
The student loan default rate at Carnegie Mellon is 1.0%. 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 paying for Carnegie Mellon University.
See which majors at Carnegie Mellon University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Carnegie Mellon University.
Contact details for Carnegie Mellon are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 |
| Phone: | 412-268-2000 |
| Website: | www.cmu.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Computer Information Systems | 821 | NA |
| Electrical Engineering | 536 | $139,337 |
| Computer Science | 364 | $171,264 |
| Management Sciences & Quantitative Methods | 315 | NA |
| Mechanical Engineering | 262 | $76,523 |
| Statistics | 233 | $93,111 |
| Information Technology | 169 | NA |
| Business Administration & Management | 138 | $95,891 |
| Biomedical Engineering | 134 | NA |
| Computer Engineering | 120 | NA |
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 2022-2023, 3,246 students took at least one online class at Carnegie Mellon University. This is a decrease from the 4,666 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 3,246 | 572 |
| 2021-2022 | 4,666 | 241 |
| 2020-2021 | 431 | 15 |
| 2018-2019 | 1,324 | 27 |
Learn more about online learning at Carnegie Mellon University.
If you’re considering Carnegie Mellon University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Carnegie Mellon? 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.