What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$21,530 to $47,895 a year, depending on income.
College Scorecard 2024 estimate
See the price at your income ↑Sticker price
Full cost before aid: $74,226 a year. Average need-based aid package: $41,944.Aid and debt
43.8%
receive need-based grants
$57,257
average debt at graduation
6,339
students got merit aid
about 45% of undergraduates
$18,646
average merit award
Getting In
Admit rates
52.2%
admitted overall
80%
admitted Early Decision
51.9%
admitted Regular Decision
Early Decision
Early Decision applicants were admitted at nearly 2x the Regular Decision rate, and Early Decision is binding: you commit to attend if admitted.
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Some of that gap reflects who applies early (recruited athletes, legacy applicants and highly committed students concentrate in that pool), so it isn't proof that applying early would raise any one student's own odds.
Key dates
Test scores
SAT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 1190–1370 · 47% of the class submitted
ACT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 26–32 · 22% of the class submitted
42% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What they value
- Very important
- GPA
- SAT/ACT scores
- Important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- Personal essay
- Considered
- Class rank
- Recommendations
- Extracurriculars
- Special talent
- Character
- First-gen status
- Legacy status
- Where you're from
- In-state residency
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
Baylor rates two things you can work on as Important: course rigor and your essay.
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AP, IB, and dual-enrollment classes strengthen an application here — a strong mix of them helps. A strong essay can differentiate an otherwise average application.
Baylor rates demonstrated interest 'Considered' — it can tip a close decision, without being decisive.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C7 (admissions factors)
Baylor just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-Baylor essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
51.7% of Baylor classes have fewer than 20 students.
51.7%
under 20 students
39.6%
20 to 49
8.7%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. Baylor CDS 2025–26, I-3.
14:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
34%
live on campus
~30%
in Greek life
Greek-life participation from Baylor Student Life End of Year Report 2023-24 () — not reported in Baylor's 2025–26 Common Data Set.
Who attends
- White56.9%
- Hispanic19%
- Asian8.6%
- Black6.1%
- Multiracial5.2%
- Unknown / other0.7%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. Baylor CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
71.3% of Baylor students graduate in 4 years.
71.3%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
82.2%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
89.29%
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
74.5% finish in 6 years, against 82.2% of all students.
A 7.7-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 Waco.
Waco is a mid-size Central Texas city on the Brazos River, and Baylor's thousand acres sit on the near bank with downtown a short walk away — close enough that the campus and the city read as one place rather than two.
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Waco is exactly halfway up I-35 between Dallas–Fort Worth and Austin, about an hour and three quarters either way, which shapes almost everything: the big-city weekend is a drive, not a night out. In town there is Magnolia's silo complex, Cameron Park's 416 acres of bluffs and trails along the river, and a restaurant scene that has grown fast since the Fixer Upper years. The thing to understand before applying is that Baylor's Baptist identity is structural, not decorative: two semesters of Chapel and two Christian religion courses are graduation requirements for every undergraduate, with no exemption for students of other faiths or none, and Baylor is explicit that you do not have to be Christian to enrol.
The City
Mid-size city
Waco, TX
Best For
Notable alumni
Notable Alumni
Ann Richards
The 45th governor of Texas and the first woman elected to the office in her own right, known nationally for a plainspoken wit she sharpened on Baylor's debate team. She came from Waco High School on a debate scholarship and took her degree in 1954, three decades before she became the first woman to hold statewide office in Texas in fifty years.
Class of 1954
Robert Griffin III
Baylor's first Heisman Trophy winner, in 2011, and the second overall pick in the following NFL draft, where he was named Offensive Rookie of the Year. He arrived on campus at seventeen and finished a political science degree in three years, leaving for the NFL needing only a thesis to complete a master's in communications.
Class of 2010
Joanna Gaines
Co-founder of Magnolia and co-host of HGTV's Fixer Upper, the renovation business that turned downtown Waco into a national destination. She took a communications degree in 2001; Baylor named her and her husband Chip, also an alumnus, Alumni of the Year in 2015.
Class of 2001
Thomas Harris
Novelist behind The Silence of the Lambs and the rest of the Hannibal Lecter books, whose film adaptation swept the five major Academy Awards. He majored in English at Baylor and covered crime for the Waco Tribune-Herald before turning to fiction.
Class of 1963
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
Traditions
Traditions
Chapel
Baylor's oldest tradition and a graduation requirement since 1846: every undergraduate completes two semesters, meeting twice a week, taken as a zero-credit pass/fail course. There is real choice in how — roughly fifty-eight sections run each semester, from all-campus worship to chapels built around a particular major or vocation — but there is no exemption. Students of other faiths or none pick a section with an adviser rather than opting out, and Baylor has piloted sections designed specifically to engage non-Christians.
Diadeloso
The Day of the Bear — one Tuesday each spring when Baylor cancels classes and the campus turns into a festival on Fountain Mall: food trucks, live music, a fun run, live animals, and a tug-of-war that has survived from the very first one. President Pat Neff started it in 1932 simply to give students a break; the student body renamed it in Spanish in 1966.
The Baylor Line
Every home football game opens with the freshman class, in gold jerseys printed with their graduation year, running onto the field ahead of the team and forming a corridor for it to come through. It has run since 1970 and it is the entry ritual here — the same class runs the Line again at Homecoming, an event Baylor claims as the first recognisable collegiate homecoming in America, held in November 1909 and still run every autumn with a parade and a bonfire.
Weekend escapes from Waco
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Waco
Dallas–Fort Worth
About 1 hour 45 minutesStraight up I-35 — the Metroplex is where a large share of Baylor's Texas students are from, and where the professional sports, the museums and the region's big airport are.
Austin
About 1 hour 50 minutesStraight down I-35 in the other direction, for live music, the Capitol, Barton Springs and the Hill Country beyond it.
Dinosaur Valley State Park, Glen Rose
About 1 hour 45 minutesDinosaur tracks preserved in the limestone bed of the Paluxy River, with swimming holes and about twenty miles of trails — the nearest thing to a proper outdoors weekend that isn't a city.
Getting there and game days
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Waco Regional (ACT)
About 20 minutes from campus
For international flights: Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) — about 2 hours by car.
Pro sports nearby
- Dallas Cowboys NFLAbout 1 hour 45 minutes to Arlington away
- Texas Rangers MLBAbout 1 hour 45 minutes to Arlington away
- Dallas Mavericks NBAAbout 1 hour 45 minutes away
- Dallas Stars NHLAbout 1 hour 45 minutes away
- Austin FC MLSAbout 1 hour 50 minutes away
Internships and jobs nearby
Career Proximity
Waco's own economy is hospitals, schools and manufacturing, and the corporate recruiting is the hour-and-three-quarter drive in either direction — Dallas–Fort Worth north, Austin south. What Waco has that few towns this size do is heavy industry inside a term-time radius: L3Harris modifies aircraft in Waco, Mars Wrigley and Sanderson Farms run plants here, two hospital systems anchor the city, and SpaceX tests rocket engines at its McGregor development site about half an hour southwest, where Baylor engineering students have interned on the Raptor test team.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Baylor Scott & White Health
- Ascension Providence
- L3Harris Technologies
- SpaceX
- Mars Wrigley Confectionery
Dallas–Fort Worth — about 1 hour 45 minutes by car, with Austin about the same distance south; downtown Waco itself borders campus
Who thrives here
Who Thrives Here
Baylor admits 52.2% of applicants overall but 80.0% through early decision, so the binding application is a real lever here. It is a mid-size private on a thousand acres in Waco: 14,183 undergraduates, 14 students per faculty member and 51.7% of sections under 20, which is the small-class experience a private-college price is supposed to buy. The religious identity is not decoration — Baylor requires two semesters of chapel of every undergraduate, and its own admissions material says plainly that non-Christian students are not exempt, so a student who wants none of that should decide about it first rather than last. About 30% of undergraduates join a fraternity or sorority, and 34% live in university housing, so most upperclass students rent in town. Cost is the hardest part of this decision. Tuition runs $67,756, Baylor meets 66% of demonstrated need, and graduates carry $57,257 in average debt — the figure to hold against a 71.3% four-year graduation rate and 82.2% within six.