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.
Harvard University was awarded 62 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is general history.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
College Factual ranked Harvard as #4 out of 2,152 colleges and universities in the country on its 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 Harvard held the #6 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
Harvard also holds the #2 spot on the Best Colleges in Massachusetts ranking.
Harvard University has a very low acceptance rate of 3%, 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 Harvard just in case you don't make the cut.
About 55% of students accepted to Harvard submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 730 and 780. Math scores were between 760 and 800.
The student to faculty ratio at Harvard is an impressive 7 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 Harvard University is 88%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 98% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Harvard 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 Harvard for first-time, full-time students is 86%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Harvard University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 8,527 undergraduates at Harvard with 5,699 being full-time and 2,828 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5,900 | $3,002 | $4,180 | $17,037 | $52,634 |
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 Harvard, 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 Harvard, approximately 9% of students took out student loans averaging $9,004 a year. That adds up to $36,016 over four years for those students.
The student loan default rate at Harvard 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 the location of Harvard University.
Contact details for Harvard are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | Massachusetts Hall, Cambridge, MA 02138 |
| Phone: | 617-495-1000 |
| Website: | www.harvard.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Business Administration & Management | 1,008 | NA |
| Law | 611 | NA |
| General Education | 568 | NA |
| Educational Assessment | 412 | NA |
| Public Health | 411 | NA |
| Management Sciences & Quantitative Methods | 355 | NA |
| Public Administration | 310 | NA |
| Public Policy | 304 | NA |
| Sustainability Science | 296 | NA |
| Finance & Financial Management | 270 | 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, 8,885 students took at least one online class at Harvard University. This is a decrease from the 11,929 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 8,885 | 6,923 |
| 2021-2022 | 11,929 | 10,495 |
| 2020-2021 | 29,581 | 27,933 |
| 2018-2019 | 5,681 | 4,087 |
If you’re considering Harvard University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Harvard? 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.