by our College Data Analytics TeamCollege 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.
Howard University was awarded 3 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is general psychology.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Howard is ranked #721 out of 2,152 schools in the nation for overall quality on College Factual's 2025 Best Colleges list. This is an improvement over the previous year, when Howard held the #794 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
Howard also holds the #5 spot on the Best Colleges in District of Columbia ranking.
The acceptance rate at Howard University is a competitive 53%, so make sure you take your application seriously when putting it together. Even leaving out a minor detail could be a reason to move you to the rejection pile.
About 31% of students accepted to Howard submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 540 and 650. Math scores were between 510 and 640.
The student to faculty ratio at Howard University 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 Howard University is 67%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 88% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Howard 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 Howard the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 52%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Howard University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 7,857 undergraduates at Howard with 7,497 being full-time and 360 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $41,343 | $43,029 | $46,001 | $47,831 | $48,186 |
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 Howard, 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 Howard, approximately 60% of students took out student loans averaging $7,415 a year. That adds up to $29,660 over four years for those students.
Get more details about the location of Howard University.
Contact details for Howard are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 2400 Sixth St Nw, Washington, DC 20059 |
| Phone: | 202-806-6100 |
| Website: | www.howard.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Law | 162 | NA |
| Political Science & Government | 125 | $31,897 |
| General Biology | 124 | $28,696 |
| Communication & Journalism (Other) | 116 | $25,878 |
| Medicine | 115 | NA |
| General Psychology | 96 | $18,934 |
| Public Relations & Advertising | 80 | $39,120 |
| Dentistry | 75 | NA |
| Business Administration & Management | 72 | $64,231 |
| Social Work | 69 | 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, 9,360 students took at least one online class at Howard University. This is a decrease from the 9,904 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 9,360 | 339 |
| 2021-2022 | 9,904 | 185 |
| 2020-2021 | 3,565 | 109 |
| 2018-2019 | 1,059 | 29 |
If you’re considering Howard University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Howard? 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.