At a Glance
Arkansas admits 73.9% of applicants.
What You'll Actually Pay
See what families at different income levels actually pay after aid.
What families actually pay, by income level
After grants and scholarships. Before loans. Public school prices shown at in-state rates.
Source: College Scorecard / IPEDS, 2024-25
Where the Sticker Price Goes
Based on average need-based grant. Actual cost varies by family income — see chart above.
Shown at in-state rates.
Debt at Graduation
Not reported by this school
receive need-based grant aid
Not reported by this school
average debt at graduation
Merit Aid
Not reported by this school — some schools award aid based on need alone, without merit scholarships.
Getting In
Arkansas admits 73.9% of applicants.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 31% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 72% of the class submitted
25.9% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
University of Arkansas gives essays less weight than many schools — academics drive most admissions decisions here. Demonstrated interest is Not Considered here — campus visits and emails to admissions won't affect your odds.
Student Life
36.1% of Arkansas classes have fewer than 20 students.
Share of undergraduate class sections at each size, from CDS Section I-3. More red = more large lectures.
At Arkansas, 36.1% of your classes will have fewer than 20 students.
Class size data reflects all undergraduate sections including labs, seminars, and lectures. Large research universities often have smaller upper-division and graduate-level sections that improve the overall distribution. First and second-year students typically experience larger classes than these averages suggest.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section I-3 (class sizes)
21:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
From out of state (freshman class)
53.3%
Live on campus
25%
Men in fraternities
24%
Women in sororities
47%
Who Attends
Racial and ethnic breakdown of enrolled undergraduates, as reported in each school's Common Data Set. "Unknown / Other" includes students who did not report or selected "other."
Arkansas's student body is 72.6% white.
Popular Majors
Majors data isn't reported yet for this school.
Will They Graduate?
Arkansas graduates 55% of students in 4 years.
Graduating late means paying for extra semesters. The 6-year rate tells you who eventually finishes — the 4-year rate tells you what it actually costs.
Arkansas graduates 55% of students in 4 years.
What finishing late actually costs
Based on each school's published cost of attendance. Public school costs shown at in-state rates.
Arkansas
55%
4-yr grad rate
Extra year cost: $27,767*
* In-state cost of attendance. Out-of-state students pay significantly more.
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2025–26, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
70.9%
Overall 6-yr rate
57.5%
Pell recipient rate
A 13.4 point graduation gap between lower-income and overall students suggests financial or academic challenges for some students.
Freshman Retention
85.9%
85.9% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Fayetteville.
Fayetteville sits in the Ozark hills at the south end of the Northwest Arkansas corridor, and campus climbs uphill from Dickson Street — the bar, music-venue and restaurant strip that is effectively the town's front porch — to Old Main at the top. It is a genuine college town: the university is the largest thing in it, and gamedays reorganise the week. What is unusual is what sits immediately north. Springdale, Rogers and Bentonville run up the interstate as one continuous, fast-growing corridor built around three Fortune 500 headquarters, so a student here is in a small hilly city and next door to a serious job market at the same time. Trails and mountain biking are everywhere, and the cost of living is low.
Notable Alumni
J. William Fulbright
US senator for thirty years and the longest-serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He wrote the 1946 legislation that created the Fulbright international exchange programme, and at 34 he came back to run the university itself as its president. The College of Arts and Sciences carries his name.
Class of 1925
Fay Jones
Architect who built his whole career in Arkansas rather than on either coast. He won the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, the highest honour in American architecture, and the AIA ranked his Thorncrown Chapel the fourth-best building by an American architect of the twentieth century. He was in the university's first graduating class of architecture students, then taught here for thirty-five years and became the architecture school's first dean; it is named for him now.
Jerry Jones
Owner, president and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys, which he bought in 1989 and turned into three Super Bowl winners in four years. He started an oil and gas company first, and he had already been here as a starter and co-captain of the 1964 national championship football team.
Charles Portis
Novelist who wrote True Grit, filmed twice and the source of John Wayne's only Academy Award. He took a journalism degree here after the Marine Corps and spent a decade reporting — the Arkansas Gazette, then the New York Herald Tribune, where he ran the London bureau — before going home to Arkansas to write fiction.
Class of 1958
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
College town
Fayetteville, AR
Best For
Traditions
Senior Walk
The names of the university's graduates are engraved into the campus sidewalks, class by class, going back to the first graduating class — miles of them by now, and new names are cut in every year. The university calls it its longest tradition, in the literal sense of length.
Calling the Hogs
The Hog Call is the chant, and it is one of the most recognisable in college sports. Students learn it before classes start and it turns up well outside the stadium — after big plays, at weddings, anywhere Arkansans find each other.
Spoofer's Stone
A limestone rock near Old Main where, back when male and female students were not allowed to mingle, students left notes for each other tucked into the crevices. It became a place people got engaged, and it stayed one. The university even named a colour in its brand palette after it.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Fayetteville
Bentonville
40 minutesCrystal Bridges Museum of American Art, free to enter and endowed by the Walton family, plus the Momentary contemporary art space and the mountain-biking trail network that has made the town a destination in its own right.
Buffalo National River
1 hour 40 minutesThe first river in the country to be protected as a national river — bluffs, float trips and camping in the Ozarks, and an elk herd in the Boxley Valley.
Tulsa, Oklahoma
2 hours 20 minutesThe nearest big city: the Gathering Place riverfront park, the Philbrook museum, the Greenwood District and its Black Wall Street history, and the touring acts that skip Fayetteville.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Northwest Arkansas National (XNA)
35 minutes from campus
For international flights: Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) — about 6 hours by road, or one connecting flight.
Pro sports nearby
- Northwest Arkansas Naturals MiLB
- Kansas City Chiefs NFLAbout 4 hours 30 minutes away
- Kansas City Royals MLBAbout 4 hours 30 minutes away
Career Proximity
Three Fortune 500 headquarters sit within a forty-minute drive of campus — Walmart in Bentonville, Tyson Foods in Springdale and J.B. Hunt in Lowell — so retail, supply chain and logistics internships here are term-time jobs you commute to rather than summers you relocate for.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Walmart
- Tyson Foods
- J.B. Hunt Transport Services
- Arvest Bank
- Simmons Foods
- Washington Regional Medical System
Bentonville — about 40 minutes from campus
Who Thrives Here
Arkansas admits 73.9% of applicants and enrolls 29,252 undergraduates in Fayetteville. What distinguishes it is the job market on its doorstep: Northwest Arkansas is the corporate home of Walmart, Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt, so an internship at a Fortune 500 headquarters is a short drive rather than a summer relocation. Greek life is large and lopsided — 24% of men and 47% of women join — and only 25% of undergraduates live in university housing. In-state students pay $10,916 and everyone else $33,184. One real gap belongs in this paragraph rather than buried: Arkansas filed the entire financial-aid section of its Common Data Set blank, so there is no published figure for what share of need it meets or what its graduates borrow — run its net price calculator before you rely on the sticker. On outcomes, 85.9% come back for a second year, 55.0% finish in four and 70.9% within six.