What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$14,319 to $22,470 a year for in-state students, depending on income.
College Scorecard 2024 estimate · in-state rates
See the price at your income ↑Sticker price
Full cost before aid: $27,767 a year in-state.Aid and debt
Not reported by this school: share receiving need-based grants, average debt, merit aid.
Getting In
Key dates
Test scores
SAT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 1020–1210 · 31% of the class submitted
ACT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 21–28 · 72% of the class submitted
25.9% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What they value
- Very important
- GPA
- Considered
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- Class rank
- SAT/ACT scores
- Personal essay
- Recommendations
- Extracurriculars
- Special talent
- Character
- First-gen status
- Legacy status
- Where you're from
- In-state residency
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Not considered
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
Arkansas doesn't consider demonstrated interest in admissions at all — visits and follow-up emails won't move the needle here.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C7 (admissions factors)
Arkansas just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-Arkansas essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
36.1% of Arkansas classes have fewer than 20 students.
36.1%
under 20 students
42.2%
20 to 49
21.7%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. Arkansas CDS 2025–26, I-3.
21:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
53.3%
first-years from out of state
25%
live on campus
24%
of men in fraternities
47%
of women in sororities
Who attends
- White72.6%
- Hispanic12.5%
- Multiracial5.3%
- Black3.5%
- Asian3%
- Unknown / other0.8%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. Arkansas CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
55% of Arkansas students graduate in 4 years.
55%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
70.9%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
85.9%
return after first year
Finishing late means paying for extra semesters, so the 4-year rate is the one that shows the cost.
Students with Pell Grants
57.5% finish in 6 years, against 70.9% of all students.
A 13.4-point gap: Pell Grant students finish less often than students overall.
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.
MoreLess
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.
The City
College town
Fayetteville, AR
Best For
Notable alumni
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.
Traditions
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 from Fayetteville
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 and game days
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
Internships and jobs nearby
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
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.