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.
James Madison University was awarded 137 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is health & physical education.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
College Factual ranked JMU as #141 out of 2,152 colleges and universities in the country on its 2025 Best Colleges list. This puts it in the top 10% of all schools in the nation. This is an improvement over the previous year, when JMU held the #169 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
JMU also holds the #7 spot on the Best Colleges in Virginia ranking.
The acceptance rate at James Madison University is 78%. That's higher than the rate at many schools, but still low enough to be considered somewhat selective. If you want to get in, you'll need good grades and to be able to show that JMU is a good fit for you.
About 23% of students accepted to JMU submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 580 and 670. Math scores were between 560 and 650.
The student to faculty ratio at James Madison University is about average at 17 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 James Madison University is 81%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
James Madison University has a freshmen retention rate of 89%. 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.
Students are considered to have graduated on time if they finish their studies within four years. At JMU the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 68%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at James Madison University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 19,727 undergraduates at JMU with 18,420 being full-time and 1,307 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $13,170 | $14,028 | $18,596 | $24,672 | $28,096 |
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 JMU, 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 JMU, approximately 35% of students took out student loans averaging $9,063 a year. That adds up to $36,252 over four years for those students.
See which majors at James Madison University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of James Madison University.
Contact details for JMU are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 800 South Main Street, Harrisonburg, VA 22807 |
| Phone: | 540-568-6211 |
| Website: | www.jmu.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Mental & Social Health Services | 453 | $33,971 |
| Communication & Media Studies | 409 | $42,769 |
| Nursing | 317 | $76,490 |
| General Psychology | 291 | $31,734 |
| Health & Physical Education | 268 | $35,955 |
| Liberal Arts General Studies | 243 | $49,408 |
| General Biology | 192 | $34,159 |
| Business Administration & Management | 191 | $65,931 |
| Marketing | 189 | $61,692 |
| Information Science | 155 | $80,173 |
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, 6,725 students took at least one online class at James Madison University. This is a decrease from the 7,843 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 6,725 | 1,036 |
| 2021-2022 | 7,843 | 1,103 |
| 2020-2021 | 20,632 | 4,653 |
| 2018-2019 | 1,632 | 545 |
Learn more about online learning at James Madison University.
If you’re considering James Madison University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against JMU? 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.