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.
Western Washington University was awarded 663 badges in the 2023 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is data science, other.
WWU landed the #299 spot in College Factual's 2023 ranking of best overall colleges in the United States. The higher ed experts analyzed 2,241 colleges and universities across the nation to determine this ranking. This puts it in the top 15% of all schools in the nation. This is an improvement over the previous year, when WWU held the #373 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
WWU also holds the #7 spot on the Best Colleges in Washington ranking.
With an acceptance rate of 94%, WWU has a fairly liberal admissions policy. However, don't just assume you'll get in! Put together a good application and make sure you include all requested documents and materials.
About 83% of students accepted to WWU submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 550 and 650. Math scores were between 530 and 620.
Learn more about Western Washington University admissions.
With a student to faculty ratio of 18 to 1, Western Washington University is about average in this regard as the nationwide rate is 15 to 1. While this does not translate directly to class size, it's a good indicator of how much time professors will have to spend with their students on a one-on-one basis.
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 Western Washington University is 69%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 79% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Western Washington 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.
Students are considered to have graduated on time if they finish their studies within four years. At WWU the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 39%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Western Washington University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 14,194 undergraduates at WWU with 12,622 being full-time and 1,572 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $9,979 | $11,357 | $16,819 | $21,763 | $23,101 |
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 WWU, 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 WWU, approximately 40% of students took out student loans averaging $6,514 a year. That adds up to $26,056 over four years for those students.
The student loan default rate at WWU is 1.7%. 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 Western Washington University.
See which majors at Western Washington University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Western Washington University.
Contact details for WWU are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 516 High Street, Bellingham, WA 98225-9008 |
| Phone: | 360-650-3000 |
| Website: | wwu.edu/ |
| Facebook: | http://www.facebook.com/westernwashingtonuniversity |
| Twitter: | https://twitter.com/WWU |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Natural Resources Conservation | 234 | $25,380 |
| General Psychology | 224 | $27,918 |
| Business Administration & Management | 158 | $42,166 |
| Sociology | 138 | $26,202 |
| Computer Information Systems | 123 | $69,837 |
| Writing Studies | 114 | $22,536 |
| Marketing | 108 | $40,450 |
| Human Services | 106 | $33,003 |
| Communication & Media Studies | 105 | $32,487 |
| Other Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies | 103 | $22,773 |
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 2019-2020, 903 students took at least one online class at Western Washington University. This is a decrease from the 948 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2019-2020 | 903 | 142 |
| 2018-2019 | 948 | 212 |
| 2017-2018 | 825 | 133 |
| 2016-2017 | 899 | 150 |
| 2015-2016 | 949 | 206 |
Learn more about online learning at Western Washington University.
If you’re considering Western Washington University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against WWU? 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.
