Oklahoma State University: acceptance rate is 71% with guaranteed admission with a 3.0 GPA. The campus is very pretty, with a neo traditional feel, many new and expensive buildings, very clean, wide open skies, and some students dressed in Western (cowboy) clothing. Generous merit awards for top students.
Cons: Stillwater, OK, is not much of a town. The disabilities office seemed only geared to learning disabilities and not to medical disabilities.
University of Oklahoma: acceptance rate is 77%, absolutely beautiful Gothic traditional
college campus, tons of school spirit. Very much an SEC school on the plains. Good merit awards.
Cons (to us): seemed like lots of rich kids from Dallas and in mid March it was hot as heck. YMMV.
Oklahoma State and U of Oklahoma seemed like totally opposite schools.
Ole Miss: acceptance rate near 98%. Oxford, MS is the quintessential college town. Beautiful campus, extremely generous merit awards.
California resident students and parents regularly complain about how hard it is to get into the state universities in California. But many have frosh admit rates at least 60%:
UC Santa Cruz 65%
UC Riverside 74%
UC Merced 92%
All CSUs other than Long Beach, Pomona, San Diego, and San Luis Obispo (and most of them are “not impacted” at the campus level so they will admit at baseline CSU eligibility except for applicants to majors they list as “impacted”).
In other words, only 10 out of 32 UC+CSU campuses have frosh admit rates under 60%. Many students can find some of the other 22 campuses to be suitable.
Also, of the 10 with frosh admit rates under 60%, 8 of them would qualify for the 20-59% frosh admit rate for the other thread.
University of Alabama, 76%. Beautiful campus, national championship level sports, great automatic merit available, suite style dorms are super nice, honors college helps smart kids find their people, tons of student support. My son loves it and we have been super impressed. Yet to be determined how it translates in the job market…finding an internship has been tough so far. I suspect Houston companies (where we live) prefer Texas students.
University of Houston also has a 70% admit rate but much to love. Strong engineering school, well funded by industry. Good sports and tons of cultural events on campus and nearby in the city.
Northern Illinois University (NIU) has a 70% acceptance rate. I know several people who graduated in tech/computer majors who work for big tech companies and was recruited from school directly. It’s a college/small town campus with big spirit and D1 sports. One of the biggest pros for this school is that it does NOT charge an out of state premium. Everyone is charged the same in-state rate. And the cost of living in DeKalb is really reasonable. Plus, they are fairly generous with merit scholarships (given that their tuition is already low). Merit Scholarships for Freshmen - NIU - Financial Aid and Scholarships Office
College of Charleston- 72% acceptance rate based on their website.
Loved the campus, tour guides were friendly, seems to be fairly small to mid size classes, beautiful walkable city. For health professions, there’s a hospital and medical school nearby for internship opportunities. Great weather and good merit awards. Disability office was very responsive if anyone is looking at that as a criteria.
Vaughn College of Aeronautics & Technology – Queens, NY
Acceptance rate: according to College Navigator, “this institution has an open admission policy.”, so I think that means 100% as long as you’re within a specific set of requirements.
The campus is adjacent to New York-Laguardia Airport (LGA) and, in fact–looks like an airport. I visited Vaughn for a robotics competition that was taking place there (and competed there too!!), and if you’re interested in engineering or technology or aeronautics/aviation, it is a good school to check out! Or even if you’re a general aviation geek like me…
I’m not applying (discovered it a wee bit after submitting my apps), but wanted to share the love.
Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT, has small classroom sizes, a beautiful campus near the mountains, a suburb of New Haven, CT, new dorms, and a great school spirit. Its biggest sport is the Hockey team. It is also a pretty campus size with 6,000 students and great job placement being two hours from NYC. My son was accepted with generous merit but unfortunately wants a larger, public university.
I’ll add Ursinus College in PA, with an admit rate of about 80%. Small liberal arts college, with a successful pre-med program. Lots of faculty interaction, research opportunities and robust sports and extracurriculars.
My D got an excellent education there and got so much interaction and support from professors.
I’ll add Elon, which has a 66% acceptance rate in its most recent (2024-2025) CDS. The campus is beautiful and the university seems very engaged in trying to make it a nice place to be for students and their parents. On the downside, it is pretty remote from anything exciting. But we felt like that was one of the reasons (maybe) that the school has so many activities planned for students. I know some of its programs - especially MT are INCREDIBLY difficult to get into. But overall acceptance rate is 66%.
A couple more already mentioned here..we also really liked JMU. Fabulous school spirit and just a really cool vibe. Sadly it is also very remote IMO. Two hours to the airport - UGH. But we did love the school.
And definitely SMU (61% acceptance rate). Strong in many areas. The neighborhood is beautiful and safe and convenient and walkable to so so much. The school spirit is crazy (good). It’s a rich kid school though, for sure. If you can hang I think it’s great. I do have cousins who went and are of more modest means. They did enjoy it but I do think the experience is different if you are in the mix, or not.
I’ll put in a plug for DePaul University in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. It is a commuter school with a lot of first-in-family and recent immigrant students, and that is it’s superpower. The students are there to work hard and better themselves, not party. The academics are solid, and the outcomes are strong in large part to the school’s efforts to build relationships with Chicago employers.
My wife owned a business in Chicagoland, and she started hiring from DePaul. Her business ran operations all over the world, and it helped that many DePaul students grew up speaking another language at home. Ultimately, around a third of her employees were Blue Demons, and some of them rose to senior management after being hired right out of school.
I’m a fan of Loyola University Chicago, which offers the strength of a well-rounded Jesuit education, a great interdisciplinary honors program, and gorgeous campuses on the Chicago Lake Shore (main), Water Tower / Magnificient Mile (business), nearby (health), and also in Rome, Italy. Has a particularly strong nursing program.
My favorites in this group are Furman and Hope. Furman has such a nice campus. I recall driving and arriving on campus where you turn onto the campus and see a big set of fountains and then a lake and tower. It was one of the most striking first impressions and was followed by a great tour.
Hope has some of the nicest students on any campus in the country and very rigorous sciences, especially chemistry. Great track record of medical and grad student placement driven by their undergrad research.
Juniata College (76%) - great small school in PA with a supportive, friendly community. Excellent supports for my daughter with ADHD. Generally strong for sciences and pre-health but a real stand out is the environmental science program which includes a semester spent at their field station immersed in a small learning community. Latest magazine had a nice article about it https://www.juniata.edu/magazine/fall-2024/natural-habitat.php
Also, some big schools that have a lower overall admit rate have some really interesting programs with much higher admit rates. Example - Virginia Tech admits by major and their data science major, called “Computational Modeling and Data Analytics,” has an overall 76% admit rate (68% in state, 81% OOS). A much easier admit than computer science but the program is essentially half CS/half applied math & stats. Students can easily add a CS minor. It’s a small program with great hands-on experience and strong faculty relationships and one of the highest graduate salaries at the university.
University of Portland. Acceptance rate hovers around 75-95%. Small Catholic college in a beautiful part of Portland. The education is solid with very good and challenging majors including nursing, engineering, computer science, and business. The school offers a lot of merit scholarship and they place very well in the Northwest especially in Portland/Oregon and Washington where Nike, Intel, Providence, Adidas, Fisher Investments, Daimler, and Oregon Health Science is located. There’s so much to do in the area whether it’s skiing Mount Hood, hiking at Forest Park, biking in St. John’s, eating at the various food trucks or neighborhoods. Moreover, there are a number of clubs and organizations that students can be a part of and take an active role in leading. Student body is fairly diverse and they are friendly and supportive of each other. Professors know the students by name and genuinely care about them and their wellbeing, contacting students outside of school to see how they are doing and overall keeping in touch with them after graduation. The school also has a very good summer abroad and study abroad program to various countries including Austria, France, the UK, Japan. The school also has a good entrepreneurship program and a new sports business minor that did have some loose connections with the Lakers and the new G League team that play on campus. Their D1 sports programs are also very good in women’s basketball, both men’s and women’s soccer, men’s baseball, and in cross country. DS graduated in 2024 and was well prepared in applying for jobs and entering the work force. I cannot commend the University of Portland enough. Here is a video from the College Tour and UP’s website.
