by our College Data Analytics TeamIn its yearly rankings, College Factual analyzes over 2,000 colleges and universities to determine which ones are the best in a variety of categories, such as overall value, quality, diversity, which schools are the best for each major, and much more.
William Rainey Harper College was awarded 18 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is general studies.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
College Factual ranked Harper College as #640 out of 2,152 colleges and universities in the country on its 2025 Best Colleges list.
Harper College also holds the #25 spot on the Best Colleges in Illinois ranking.
If you are worried about getting into William Rainey Harper College, don't be. The school has a liberal open admissions policy, which means you only need to meet basic requirements in order to be admitted. Still, be sure to submit a complete application and provide any other requested materials.
With a student to faculty ratio of 18 to 1, William Rainey Harper College is about average in this regard as the nationwide rate is 15 to 1. While this does not translate directly to class size, it's a good indicator of how much time professors will have to spend with their students on a one-on-one basis.
When estimating how much access students will have to their teachers, some people like to look at what percentage of faculty members are full time. This is because part-time teachers may not have as much time to spend on campus as their full-time counterparts.
The full-time faculty percentage at William Rainey Harper College is 31%. This is lower than the national average of 47%.
William Rainey Harper College has a freshmen retention rate of 73%. That's a good sign that full-time students like the school and their professors enough to want to stick around for another year. It's also a sign that the admissions team did a good job in choosing applicants who were a good fit for the school.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 12,199 undergraduates at Harper College with 4,405 being full-time and 7,794 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $4,381 | $5,702 | $8,057 | $10,243 | $11,671 |
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 Harper College, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
While almost two-thirds of students nationwide take out loans to pay for college, the percentage may be quite different for the school you plan on attending. At Harper College, approximately 3% of students took out student loans averaging $4,659 a year. That adds up to $18,636 over four years for those students.
Get more details about paying for William Rainey Harper College.
See which majors at William Rainey Harper College make the most money.
Get more details about the location of William Rainey Harper College.
Contact details for Harper College are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 1200 W Algonquin Rd, Palatine, IL 60067-7398 |
| Phone: | 847-925-6000 |
| Website: | https://www.harpercollege.edu/index.php |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Liberal Arts General Studies | 1,837 | NA |
| Practical Nursing & Nursing Assistants | 626 | NA |
| Biological & Physical Science | 388 | NA |
| Nursing | 119 | NA |
| Accounting | 118 | NA |
| Information Technology | 103 | NA |
| Business Administration & Management | 99 | NA |
| Business Support & Assistant Services | 93 | NA |
| Allied Health Professions | 92 | NA |
| Allied Health & Medical Assisting Services | 83 | NA |
Online courses area a great option for busy, working students as well as for those who have scheduling conflicts and want to study on their own time. As time goes by, expect to see more and more online learning options become available.
In 2022-2023, 6,216 students took at least one online class at William Rainey Harper College. This is a decrease from the 8,553 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 6,216 | 2,714 |
| 2021-2022 | 8,553 | 4,919 |
| 2020-2021 | 10,549 | 8,444 |
| 2018-2019 | 2,676 | 865 |
Learn more about online learning at William Rainey Harper College.
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.