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.
Southern Adventist University was awarded 31 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is nursing.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Southern Adventist landed the #244 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. This is an improvement over the previous year, when Southern Adventist held the #273 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
Southern Adventist is also ranked #4 out of 41 schools in Tennessee.
The acceptance rate at Southern Adventist University is a competitive 66%, 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 41% of students accepted to Southern Adventist submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 510 and 650. Math scores were between 470 and 630.
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 Southern Adventist University, this ratio is 15 to 1, which is on par with the national average of 15 to 1. That's not bad at all.
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 Southern Adventist University is 100%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
Southern Adventist 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.
When it comes to finishing their studies on time, those seeking a bachelor's degree from Southern Adventist have a four-year graduation rate of 33%. This is comparable to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Southern Adventist University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 2,384 undergraduates at Southern Adventist with 2,103 being full-time and 281 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $17,953 | $20,293 | $22,610 | $26,384 | $28,566 |
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 Southern Adventist, 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 Southern Adventist, approximately 40% of students took out student loans averaging $7,264 a year. That adds up to $29,056 over four years for those students.
Get more details about paying for Southern Adventist University.
See which majors at Southern Adventist University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Southern Adventist University.
Contact details for Southern Adventist are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 4881 Taylor Cir, Collegedale, TN 37315-0370 |
| Phone: | 423-236-2000 |
| Website: | www.southern.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Nursing | 225 | $66,005 |
| Social Work | 40 | NA |
| Business Administration & Management | 36 | NA |
| General Biology | 29 | NA |
| Teacher Education Grade Specific | 24 | $43,283 |
| Theological & Ministerial Studies | 23 | NA |
| Clinical, Counseling & Applied Psychology | 19 | NA |
| Allied Health & Medical Assisting Services | 17 | NA |
| Health & Physical Education | 17 | NA |
| Computer Science | 15 | 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, 1,191 students took at least one online class at Southern Adventist University. This is an increase from the 1,168 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 1,191 | 148 |
| 2021-2022 | 1,168 | 137 |
| 2020-2021 | 1,179 | 123 |
| 2018-2019 | 870 | 116 |
Learn more about online learning at Southern Adventist University.
If you’re considering Southern Adventist University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Southern Adventist? 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.