What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$18,506 to $53,061 a year, depending on income.
College Scorecard 2024 estimate
See the price at your income ↑Sticker price
Full cost before aid: $85,851 a year. Average need-based aid package: $64,469.Aid and debt
44.9%
receive need-based grants
$29,079
average debt at graduation
2,835
students got merit aid
about 43% of undergraduates
$31,061
average merit award
Getting In
Admit rates
35.3%
admitted overall
25%
admitted Early Decision
35.6%
admitted Regular Decision
Early Decision
Early Decision applicants were admitted at 1x 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: 1440–1530 · 52% of the class submitted
ACT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 32–34 · 15% of the class submitted
70% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What they value
- Very important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- Class rank
- GPA
- Extracurriculars
- Important
- Personal essay
- Recommendations
- Special talent
- Character
- Volunteer work
- Considered
- SAT/ACT scores
- First-gen status
- Legacy status
- Work experience
- Demonstrated interest
- Not considered
- Where you're from
- In-state residency
What this means for you
Case Western rates course rigor and your activities as Very Important, and your essay and your recommendations as Important.
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Rigor means AP, IB, and dual enrollment carry real weight — make sure your mix of AP or IB courses is strong. Depth in a few activities beats a long list. A strong essay can differentiate an otherwise average application. And recommendations matter here too — a recommender who knows you well helps.
Case Western rates demonstrated interest 'Considered' — it can tip a close decision, without being decisive.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C7 (admissions factors)
Case Western just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-Case Western essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
52.9% of Case Western classes have fewer than 20 students.
52.9%
under 20 students
30.7%
20 to 49
16.4%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. Case Western CDS 2025–26, I-3.
10:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
80.2%
first-years from out of state
72.2%
live on campus
16%
of men in fraternities
14%
of women in sororities
Greek-life participation from the school's prior-year Common Data Set (2024-25) — not reported in Case Western's 2025–26 Common Data Set.
Who attends
- Asian33.7%
- White32.6%
- Hispanic10.9%
- Black6.3%
- Multiracial5.3%
- Unknown / other1.8%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. Case Western CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
74.8% of Case Western students graduate in 4 years.
74.8%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
87.2%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
93.3%
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
87.8% finish in 6 years, against 87.2% of all students.
Pell Grant students finish at about the same rate as everyone else.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Cleveland.
Case Western has no real town of its own — it sits inside University Circle, a dense square mile four miles east of downtown Cleveland that also holds the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance Hall and the Cleveland Botanical Garden.
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The practical effect is that a student's daily radius includes a world-class art museum (free), an orchestra and two of the largest hospital systems in the country, all walkable, while the rest of Cleveland takes a bus or a train. The city is affordable in a way that coastal students find startling, and it is genuinely grey and cold from November through March.
The City
Major city
Cleveland, OH
Best For
Notable alumni
Notable Alumni
Craig Newmark
Founder of Craigslist, who earned both his bachelor's and master's in computer science here before moving to San Francisco.
Class of 1975
Paul Buchheit
Created Gmail as Google's 23rd employee and proposed the company's "Don't be evil" motto, after a computer engineering degree here.
Class of 1998
Donald Knuth
Author of The Art of Computer Programming and the closest thing computer science has to a founding textbook, who arrived as a physics major and left with both a bachelor's and a master's in mathematics.
Class of 1960
Paul Lauterbur
Shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the work that made MRI scanning possible.
Class of 1962
Josh Radnor
Actor, writer and director, best known as Ted Mosby across nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother.
Class of 1996
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
Traditions
Traditions
The Hudson Relays
A 26-mile relay around campus, run each spring, that pits the four class years against each other and against an alumni team. It commemorates the 1910 move from Hudson, Ohio to Cleveland, and the winning class year is engraved on a rock outside Adelbert Hall. A class that wins all four of its years is taken to dinner by the president and provost — which has happened only a handful of times.
Springfest
The largest student-run event of the year, held at the end of the spring term: student bands, food trucks, inflatables and a headline act, planned entirely by students and running since 1998.
Free access to University Circle
Students get in free to the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Natural History and the Botanical Garden, all within walking distance — an unusual amount of cultural access to treat as an ordinary weekday afternoon.
Spirit Week
The week of class-against-class competitions leading up to the Hudson Relays, which is how most first-years first meet the rest of their class year as a group.
Weekend escapes from Cleveland
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Cleveland
Cuyahoga Valley National Park
35 minutesThe only national park in Ohio, with waterfalls, a towpath trail and a scenic railroad — close enough to be an afternoon rather than a trip.
Lake Erie shoreline and the Cleveland Metroparks
20 minutesBeaches, cliffs and the ring of parks locals call the Emerald Necklace, reachable without leaving the county.
Cedar Point, Sandusky
1 hourOne of the largest roller coaster parks in the world, and the standard northern Ohio day out.
Pittsburgh, PA
2 hoursThe nearest other major city, with its own museums, neighborhoods and pro sports.
Toronto, ON
5 hoursThe nearest international city by road, far enough to be a long-weekend trip; a passport is required.
Getting there and game days
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE)
30 minutes from campus
For international flights: Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) — about 3 hours by road, or a short connecting flight from cleveland.
Pro sports nearby
- Cleveland Browns NFL
- Cleveland Cavaliers NBA
- Cleveland Guardians MLB
Internships and jobs nearby
Career Proximity
Case Western's career advantage is measured in blocks rather than miles: the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals, two of the largest academic medical systems in the United States, run their flagship hospitals inside the same square mile as the campus, so clinical work, shadowing and lab placements are a walk. Cleveland's second layer is manufacturing and materials — Sherwin-Williams, Lincoln Electric, Parker Hannifin and NASA's Glenn Research Center are all in the metro — which is what makes the engineering side of the university unusually well-connected for a school of this size. Corporate headquarters and finance sit downtown, four miles west.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Cleveland Clinic
- University Hospitals
- Sherwin-Williams
- NASA Glenn Research Center
- KeyBank
Downtown Cleveland — about 20 minutes by rapid transit; University Circle itself is the metro's second-largest employment district
Who thrives here
Who Thrives Here
Case Western sits in University Circle, a square mile of Cleveland it shares with the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Orchestra — so the campus reads less like a college town than like a research district students happen to live in, and 72.2% of them do live in university housing. The Hudson Relays, a 26-mile class-against-class relay run each spring to mark the university's 1910 move to Cleveland, sits closer to the center of campus identity than anything Greek does — though 16% of men and 14% of women joined a fraternity or sorority the last time the school reported it, and it left both rows blank this year. Academically it runs small and lab-heavy, with a 10:1 ratio, 52.9% of sections under 20 students and 93.3% of first-years returning — and it leans hard toward the sciences, with engineering alone at 22.76% of bachelor's degrees and biology another 15.98%. The aid is genuinely strong: 98.2% of demonstrated need met, an average package of $64,469, and Pell recipients finishing within six years at 87.8% against 87.2% for everyone else — a gap that runs the right way, which is rare. The trade-offs are the $71,410 sticker before aid, $29,079 of average debt for those who borrow, and a four-year graduation rate of 74.8% that trails the 87.2% six-year figure by enough to suggest a fifth year is common here.