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.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute was awarded 39 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is mechanical engineering.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
WPI is ranked #52 out of 2,152 schools in the nation for overall quality on College Factual's 2025 Best Colleges list. This puts it in the top 5% of all schools in the nation. This is an improvement over the previous year, when WPI held the #53 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
WPI also holds the #8 spot on the Best Colleges in Massachusetts ranking.
See all of the rankings for Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute has an acceptance rate of 57%, which means the school is serious about who it admits. Take your time in putting together a strong application that highlights why you are a good fit for WPI.
The student to faculty ratio at Worcester Polytechnic Institute is about average at 13 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 Worcester Polytechnic Institute is 86%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 91% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Worcester Polytechnic Institute 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.
The on-time graduation rate for someone pursuing a bachelor's degree is typically four years. This rate at WPI for first-time, full-time students is 81%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 4,892 undergraduates at WPI with 4,709 being full-time and 183 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $30,910 | $30,348 | $35,916 | $42,582 | $48,017 |
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 WPI, 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 WPI, approximately 55% of students took out student loans averaging $14,168 a year. That adds up to $56,672 over four years for those students.
Get more details about paying for Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
See which majors at Worcester Polytechnic Institute make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Contact details for WPI are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609-2280 |
| Phone: | 508-831-5000 |
| Website: | https://www.wpi.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Mechanical Engineering | 377 | $78,182 |
| Computer Science | 260 | $93,888 |
| Electrical Engineering | 177 | $89,897 |
| Biomedical Engineering | 152 | $78,283 |
| Robotics Engineering | 146 | $85,340 |
| Chemical Engineering | 114 | $78,767 |
| Aerospace & Aeronautical Engineering | 97 | $75,218 |
| Other Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies | 75 | NA |
| Data Science | 67 | NA |
| Civil Engineering | 61 | $76,419 |
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, 1,535 students took at least one online class at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. This is a decrease from the 2,304 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 1,535 | 806 |
| 2021-2022 | 2,304 | 873 |
| 2020-2021 | 834 | 661 |
| 2018-2019 | 1,089 | 653 |
Learn more about online learning at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
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.