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.
Illinois State University was awarded 123 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is special education.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Illinois State landed the #210 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 10% of all schools in the nation. This is an improvement over the previous year, when Illinois State held the #231 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
Illinois State also holds the #8 spot on the Best Colleges in Illinois ranking.
With an acceptance rate of 86%, Illinois State has a fairly liberal admissions policy. However, don't just assume you'll get in! Put together a good application and make sure you include all requested documents and materials.
About 48% of students accepted to Illinois State submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 500 and 610. Math scores were between 500 and 600.
At Illinois State University, the student to faculty ratio is 19 to 1. Compared to the national average of 15 to 1, this is somewhat high. This could mean that class sizes may be larger than they are at other colleges or universities or that professors may be required to teach more classes.
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 Illinois State University is 76%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
Illinois State University has a freshmen retention rate of 80%. 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.
The on-time graduation rate for someone pursuing a bachelor's degree is typically four years. This rate at Illinois State for first-time, full-time students is 50%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Illinois State University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 17,987 undergraduates at Illinois State with 16,666 being full-time and 1,321 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $12,904 | $13,805 | $18,239 | $24,370 | $26,478 |
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 Illinois State, 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 Illinois State, approximately 49% of students took out student loans averaging $7,247 a year. That adds up to $28,988 over four years for those students.
Get more details about paying for Illinois State University.
See which majors at Illinois State University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Illinois State University.
Contact details for Illinois State are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | North And School Streets, Normal, IL 61790-1000 |
| Phone: | 309-438-2111 |
| Website: | illinoisstate.edu/ |
| Facebook: | http://illinoisstate.edu/Facebook |
| Twitter: | https://twitter.com/IllinoisStateU |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Teacher Education Grade Specific | 471 | $44,898 |
| Nursing | 302 | $72,709 |
| Business Administration & Management | 273 | $50,647 |
| Marketing | 243 | $51,687 |
| Accounting | 208 | $62,940 |
| Special Education | 193 | $48,358 |
| Teacher Education Subject Specific | 190 | $44,613 |
| Communication & Media Studies | 175 | $38,125 |
| Finance & Financial Management | 161 | $54,958 |
| General Psychology | 159 | $32,104 |
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, 8,438 students took at least one online class at Illinois State University. This is an increase from the 8,409 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 8,438 | 986 |
| 2021-2022 | 8,409 | 945 |
| 2020-2021 | 19,814 | 14,568 |
| 2018-2019 | 4,402 | 507 |
Learn more about online learning at Illinois State University.
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.