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.
Cornell University was awarded 133 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is business, management & marketing.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Cornell landed the #9 spot in College Factual's 2025 ranking of best overall colleges in the United States. The higher ed experts analyzed 2,152 colleges and universities across the nation to determine this ranking. This puts it in the top 1% of all schools in the nation! This is an improvement over the previous year, when Cornell held the #22 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
Cornell also holds the #1 spot on the Best Colleges in New York ranking.
Cornell University has a very low acceptance rate of 7%, 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 Cornell just in case you don't make the cut.
About 37% of students accepted to Cornell submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 710 and 770. Math scores were between 760 and 800.
The student to faculty ratio is often used to measure the number of teaching resources that a college or university offers its students. The national average for this metric is 15 to 1, but at Cornell it is much better at 9 to 1. That's good news for students who want to interact more on a personal level with their teachers.
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 Cornell University is 91%. 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 Cornell 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.
The on-time graduation rate for someone pursuing a bachelor's degree is typically four years. This rate at Cornell for first-time, full-time students is 89%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Cornell University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 14,743 undergraduates at Cornell with 14,693 being full-time and 50 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $4,375 | $5,017 | $8,006 | $20,728 | $48,783 |
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 Cornell, 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 Cornell, approximately 27% of students took out student loans averaging $8,309 a year. That adds up to $33,236 over four years for those students.
Get more details about the location of Cornell University.
Contact details for Cornell are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 300 Day Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853 |
| Phone: | 607-255-2000 |
| Website: | www.cornell.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Computer Science | 859 | $152,656 |
| Business Administration & Management | 598 | NA |
| Management Sciences & Quantitative Methods | 406 | NA |
| Computer Information Systems | 394 | $103,650 |
| Human Resource Management | 388 | $73,436 |
| General Biology | 312 | $34,500 |
| Hospitality Management | 297 | $77,803 |
| Economics | 280 | $84,967 |
| Legal Research | 252 | NA |
| Mechanical Engineering | 241 | $85,440 |
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, 3,074 students took at least one online class at Cornell University. This is an increase from the 2,997 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 3,074 | 382 |
| 2021-2022 | 2,997 | 160 |
| 2020-2021 | 22,293 | 6,167 |
| 2018-2019 | 513 | 204 |
If you’re considering Cornell University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Cornell? 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.