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.
San Francisco State 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.
SFSU landed the #225 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 20% of all schools in the nation.
SFSU also holds the #30 spot on the Best Colleges in California ranking.
San Francisco State University has an acceptance rate of 94%, so it is easier to gain admission to this school than some others. Still, the admissions staff will examine your application closely to make sure you're a good fit for SFSU.
At San Francisco 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.
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 San Francisco State University is 49%. This is comparable to the national average of 47%.
San Francisco State University has a freshmen retention rate of 85%. 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 is the percent of first-time, full time students who obtain their bachelor's degree in four years or less. This rate is 25% for first-time, full-time students at SFSU, which is lower than the national rate of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at San Francisco State University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 24,024 undergraduates at SFSU with 19,847 being full-time and 4,177 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $9,082 | $10,527 | $13,135 | $17,976 | $22,274 |
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 SFSU, 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 SFSU, approximately 28% of students took out student loans averaging $5,550 a year. That adds up to $22,200 over four years for those students.
Get more details about paying for San Francisco State University.
See which majors at San Francisco State University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of San Francisco State University.
Contact details for SFSU are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 1600 Holloway Ave, San Francisco, CA 94132 |
| Phone: | 415-338-1111 |
| Website: | www.sfsu.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Business Administration & Management | 1,616 | $48,184 |
| General Biology | 479 | $36,259 |
| General Psychology | 444 | $34,803 |
| Computer Science | 353 | $50,553 |
| Communication & Media Studies | 323 | $40,790 |
| Criminal Justice & Corrections | 303 | $42,211 |
| Teacher Education Grade Specific | 284 | $38,237 |
| Film, Video & Photographic Arts | 257 | $18,654 |
| General English Literature | 209 | $32,339 |
| Nursing | 209 | $117,532 |
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 2022-2023, 17,761 students took at least one online class at San Francisco State University. This is a decrease from the 25,188 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 17,761 | 3,034 |
| 2021-2022 | 25,188 | 14,003 |
| 2020-2021 | 26,559 | 25,452 |
| 2018-2019 | 11,011 | 418 |
Learn more about online learning at San Francisco State University.
If you’re considering San Francisco State University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against SFSU? 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.