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Wayne State University Data & Information Overview

440 awards Ranking Badges
Great Price Value for Your Money
63% Acceptance Rate
This overview covers the essential stats on Wayne State University, including its rankings, majors, diversity, and more.
If you’re interested in learning more about a particular stat, just click on its tile to go to a new page that covers the topic more in-depth. Also, you can jump to any section of this page by clicking one of the links below.

How Well Is Wayne State University Ranked?

#381 Best Colleges in Nation
#7 Best Colleges in MI
Accounting Highest Ranked Major

2024 Rankings

In its yearly rankings, College Factual analyzes over 2,000 colleges and universities to determine which ones are the best in a variety of categories, such as overall value, quality, diversity, which schools are the best for each major, and much more.

Wayne State University was awarded 440 badges in the 2024 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is accounting.

Explore Best Ranked Schools for You

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Overall Quality

Wayne State landed the #381 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 is an improvement over the previous year, when Wayne State held the #464 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.

Out of the 57 colleges in Michigan, Wayne State is ranked at #7.

See all of the rankings for Wayne State University.

Is It Hard to Get Into Wayne State?

63% Acceptance Rate
60% Of Accepted Are Women
48% Submit SAT Scores

Acceptance Rate

If you're applying to Wayne State University you'll face some tough competition, since the school's acceptance rate is only 63%. Definitely don't wait until the last minute to submit your application, since applying early may be in your favor.

Average Test Scores

About 48% of students accepted to Wayne State submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 520 and 630. Math scores were between 510 and 630.

SAT Reading and Writing Scores for Wayne State University  ( 520 to 630 )
200
800

SAT Math Scores for Wayne State University  ( 510 to 630 )
200
800
Wayne State received ACT scores from 7% of accepted students. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, ACT Composite scores ranged between 22 and 28.

ACT Composite Scores for Wayne State University  ( 22 to 28 )
1
36

Learn more about Wayne State University admissions.

Wayne State University Faculty

14 to 1 Student to Faculty
60% Full Time Teachers

Student to Faculty Ratio

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 Wayne State University, this ratio is 14 to 1, which is on par with the national average of 15 to 1. That's not bad at all.

Percent of Full-Time Faculty

When estimating how much access students will have to their teachers, some people like to look at what percentage of faculty members are full time. This is because part-time teachers may not have as much time to spend on campus as their full-time counterparts.

The full-time faculty percentage at Wayne State University is 60%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.

Full-Time Faculty Percent  60 out of 100
0
100

Retention and Graduation Rates at Wayne State University

81% Freshmen Retention
20% On-Time Graduation Rate

Freshmen Retention Rate

The freshmen retention rate of 81% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Wayne State University enough to come back for another year. This is a fair bit higher than the national average of 68%. That's certainly something to check off in the good column about the school.

Freshmen Retention Rate  81 out of 100
0
100

Graduation Rate

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 20% for first-time, full-time students at Wayne State, which is lower than the national rate of 33.3%.

On-Time Graduation Rate  20 out of 100
0
100

Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Wayne State University.

Wayne State University Undergraduate Student Diversity

13,407 Full-Time Undergraduates
40.4% Racial-Ethnic Minorities*
60.4% Percent Women

During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 17,503 undergraduates at Wayne State with 13,407 being full-time and 4,096 being part-time.

How Much Does Wayne State University Cost?

$13,962 Net Price
38% Take Out Loans
$22,104 Total Student Loans
The overall average net price of Wayne State is $13,962. The affordability of the school largely depends on your financial need since net price varies by income group. See the table below for the net price for different income groups.

Net Price by Income Group for Wayne State

$0-30 K $30K-48K $48-75 $75-110K $110K +
$11,060 $11,414 $13,612 $17,814 $19,796

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 Wayne State, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.

Student Loan Debt

While almost two-thirds of students nationwide take out loans to pay for college, the percentage may be quite different for the school you plan on attending. At Wayne State, approximately 38% of students took out student loans averaging $5,526 a year. That adds up to $22,104 over four years for those students.

The student loan default rate at Wayne State is 5.1%. 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.

Get more details about paying for Wayne State University.

How Much Money Do Wayne State Graduates Make?

$46,679 Avg Salary of Grads
High Earnings Boost
Yearly salaries vary depending on what you major in, but on average, bachelor's degree recipients from Wayne State make around $46,679 per year during the early years of their employment. This is good news for future Wayne State graduates since it is 10% more than the average college graduate's salary of $42,485 per year.

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See which majors at Wayne State University make the most money.

Location of Wayne State University

Michigan State
13,407 Full-Time Undergraduates
Large City Campus Setting
Located in Detroit, Michigan, Wayne State University is a public institution. The city atmosphere of Detroit makes it a great place for students who enjoy having lots of educational and entertainment options.

Get more details about the location of Wayne State University.

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Contact details for Wayne State are given below.

Contact Details
Address: 42 W. Warren Ave., Detroit, MI 48202
Phone: 313-577-2424
Website: https://wayne.edu/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/waynestateuniversity
Twitter: http://twitter.com/waynestate

Wayne State University Majors

116 Majors With Completions
4,208 Undergraduate Degrees
2,878 Graduate Degrees
During the most recent year for which we have data, students from 116 majors graduated from Wayne State University. Of these students, 4,208 received undergraduate degrees and 2,878 graduated with a master's or doctor's degree. The following table lists the most popular undergraduate majors along with the average salary graduates from those majors make.

Most Popular Majors Bachelor’s Degrees Average Salary of Graduates
General Psychology 313 $27,699
Public Health 266 NA
International Business 240 $53,860
Marketing 190 $43,746
Human Resource Management 186 $43,409
General Biology 177 $23,098
Nursing 172 $63,013
Computer Information Systems 160 $73,198
Finance & Financial Management 143 $52,667
Social Work 123 $26,984

Learn more about the majors offered at Wayne State University along with which ones have the highest average starting salaries.

Online Learning at Wayne State

79% Take At Least One Class Online
26% Take All Classes Online

Online courses area a great option for busy, working students as well as for those who have scheduling conflicts and want to study on their own time. As time goes by, expect to see more and more online learning options become available.

In 2020-2021, 19,654 students took at least one online class at Wayne State University. This is a decrease from the 24,018 students who took online classes the previous year.

Year Took at Least One Online Class Took All Classes Online
2020-2021 19,654 6,526
2019-2020 24,018 18,883
2018-2019 9,206 1,906
2017-2018 8,812 1,859
2016-2017 7,507 1,733

Learn more about online learning at Wayne State University.

Notes and References

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.

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