by our College Data Analytics Team
College Factual recognizes the best colleges and universities in its annual rankings. These rankings include categories for best overall colleges, best colleges for each major, best value schools, and much more.
Iowa State University was awarded 444 badges in the 2024 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is graphic design.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Iowa State landed the #75 spot in College Factual's 2024 ranking of best overall colleges in the United States. The higher ed experts analyzed 2,217 colleges and universities across the nation to determine this ranking. This puts it in the top 5% of all schools in the nation. This is an improvement over the previous year, when Iowa State held the #89 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
Out of the 40 colleges in Iowa, Iowa State is ranked at #1.
With an acceptance rate of 91%, Iowa State University is easier to get into than many other schools. But that doesn't mean you can slack off on your application. Make sure to treat this school like any other when submitting requested materials and documents.
About 13% of students accepted to Iowa State 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 543 and 680.
The student to faculty ratio is often used to estimate how much interaction there is between professors and their students at a college or university. At Iowa State University, this ratio is 18 to 1, which is on par with the national average of 15 to 1. That's not bad at all.
In addition to the student to faculty ratio, some people look at what percentage of faculty members are full-time as a sign of how much time professors will be able to spend with their students. This is because part-time teachers may not be be on campus as much as their full-time counterparts.
The full-time faculty percentage at Iowa State University is 85%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
Iowa State University has a freshmen retention rate of 88%. 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 Iowa State for first-time, full-time students is 47%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Iowa State University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 26,843 undergraduates at Iowa State with 25,271 being full-time and 1,572 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $9,766 | $11,427 | $14,641 | $17,806 | $19,491 |
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 Iowa State, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
Almost 66% of college students who graduated with the class of 2018 took out student loans, but that percentage varies from school to school. At Iowa State, approximately 48% of students took out student loans averaging $7,684 a year. That adds up to $30,736 over four years for those students.
The student loan default rate at Iowa State is 2.4%. 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.
See which majors at Iowa State University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Iowa State University.
Contact details for Iowa State are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 1750 Beardshear Hall, Ames, IA 50011-2103 |
| Phone: | 515-294-4111 |
| Website: | www.iastate.edu/ |
| Facebook: | http://www.facebook.com/IowaStateU |
| Twitter: | http://twitter.com/IowaStateU |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Mechanical Engineering | 451 | $64,842 |
| Business Administration & Management | 350 | $50,665 |
| Computer Engineering | 328 | $72,598 |
| Marketing | 270 | $44,875 |
| Finance & Financial Management | 258 | $51,055 |
| Health & Physical Education | 242 | $32,074 |
| Design & Applied Arts | 239 | $37,065 |
| Agricultural Economics & Business | 236 | $46,032 |
| Teacher Education Grade Specific | 219 | $39,738 |
| Animal Science | 210 | $35,828 |
Online learning options are becoming more and more popular at American colleges and universities. Online classes are great for students who have busy schedules or for those who just want to study on their own time.
In 2020-2021, 16,019 students took at least one online class at Iowa State University. This is a decrease from the 28,334 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-2021 | 16,019 | 1,108 |
| 2019-2020 | 28,334 | 4,289 |
| 2018-2019 | 7,802 | 1,298 |
| 2017-2018 | 7,589 | 1,374 |
| 2016-2017 | 6,733 | 1,406 |
If you’re considering Iowa State University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Iowa State? 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.