Top 25 High-Admission Colleges by Graduation Rate – Private, Nonprofits

Finding colleges is a lot of work, and of course there’s no guarantee of acceptance, especially at very popular schools.

Fortunately, popular schools are not the only ones providing a quality education. In fact, there is a small niche segment of colleges where your chances of acceptance are increased: that of high-admission (95% and up) private, nonprofit colleges. Of course, if you’re a discerning student, you also want a college that gives a quality education and has a relatively high graduation rate. As well, for the ranked colleges in this list at least, tuition is the same for both in-state and out-of-state students, giving an advantage to anyone having to move states to attend, compared to public colleges.

To that end, we’ve ranked the top 25 private, nonprofit, high-admission bachelor’s degree-granting institutions by graduation rate, to give you a niche set of colleges worth considering for your post-secondary education. Data for net price, tuition, school size, on-campus housing availability and other points are included for each ranked college. We’ve also added the percentage of first-time, full-time undergrads in the last-reported academic year (in the NCES.ed.gov database) who received some sort of financial aid.

We hope that this bachelor’s college rankings list will help you to narrow your search and at least make you aware of this particular niche of colleges. We have only considered schools here with student population of over 2,000. (Another list will be prepared for the “tiny” schools.) This is part of a new series of “top 25” colleges in various niches that aim to show future college students or parents or guardians some of the possible alternatives to consider during a college search.

Before the actual college rankings for this list, here is a summary of metadata and statistics to help you get a broader view of the 25 schools included here.

NOTES:

• As college accreditation can change or only be valid regionally, please verify accreditation of any college to which you are planning to apply.
• NCES data is subject to change and this ranking list uses the most recently reported data at time of writing.
• The Areavibes cost of living score is from Areavibes.com and represents the city/ town of the college in question. It is independent of each college’s on-campus housing costs.

Average Net Price vs Tuition

The following chart is interactive. It compares each ranked institution’s official tuition against their average yearly net price (all academic and living costs, averaged across all undergrad students at the institution for the last academic year). Note: At least for this group of colleges, in-state and out-of-state tuition is the same, hence the single value of “tuition.”) Chart details:

• A modern browser is required for most of the charting features.
• The vertical Y axis represents cost in dollars, for both net price and tuition data per college.
• The horizontal X axis represents the schools (not the rankings).
• For this chart only, schools are sorted left to right by increasing net price.
• The orange line chart connects the net price points.
• The blue bar chart represents the tuition values.
• Hover your mouse over a tuition bar or net price point and a tooltip will pop up that shows the institution name and the two cost values – net price and tuition.
• Use your mouse’s scroll wheel to zoom in on a section in the main chart. The sub-chart below the main chart will indicate what section you are viewing.
• Hover your mouse over either of the two labels, “tuition” or “netprice,” underneath the sub-chart to visually highlight just the selected chart.
• The chart is built using C3.js JavaScript code library, which in turn relies on the D3.js data visualization library. See http://c3js.org if you want to explore further.

Statistics Summary

This is a summary of data available for the colleges/ universities mentioned in this college rankings list for bachelor’s of Journalism or related degree programs.

Alphabetic list of schools covered in this ranking:

• Benedictine College (Atchison, Kansas)
• Bethel University (Saint Paul, Minnesota)
• Brigham Young University-Idaho (Rexburg, Idaho)
• Columbia College (Missouri) (Columbia, Missouri)
• Grand View University (Des Moines, Iowa)
• Harding University (Searcy, Arkansas)
• Independence University (Salt Lake City, Utah)
• Indiana Wesleyan University (Marion, Indiana)
• Lindsey Wilson College (Columbia, Kentucky)
• National University (La Jolla, California)
• New England College (Henniker, New Hampshire)
• New England Institute of Technology (East Greenwich, Rhode Island)
• Nyack College (Nyack, New York)
• Palm Beach Atlantic University (West Palm Beach, Florida)
• Regis University (Denver, Colorado)
• Saint Ambrose University (Davenport, Iowa)
• Southern Adventist University (Collegedale, Tennessee)
• Southern Nazarene University (Bethany, Oklahoma)
• Trinity International University-Illinois (Deerfield, Illinois)
• University of Northwestern Ohio (Lima, Ohio)
• University of Pikeville (Pikeville, Kentucky)
• University of Rio Grande (Rio Grande, Ohio)
• University of Saint Francis-Fort Wayne (Fort Wayne, Indiana)
• Westminster College (Salt Lake City, Utah)
• Wilmington University (New Castle, Delaware)

Map for schools covered

Note: the following Google Map is auto-generated from addresses listed in the NCES database for the schools referenced below and may not be 100% accurate. As well, the map may not render correctly in some Web browsers due to security issues. (Simply click on the map’s “view larger” icon at top right to be taken to the Google Maps page — which should work properly in all modern browsers.) We apologize for any inconvenience.