What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$13,607 to $27,922 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: $35,015 a year in-state. Average need-based aid package: $14,899.Aid and debt
32.9%
receive need-based grants
$39,721
average debt at graduation
5,496
students got merit aid
about 23% of undergraduates
$5,029
average merit award
Getting In
Key dates
Test scores
SAT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 1250–1400 · 38% of the class submitted
ACT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 28–32 · 19% of the class submitted
54.57% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What they value
- Very important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- Class rank
- GPA
- In-state residency
- Important
- SAT/ACT scores
- Considered
- Personal essay
- Recommendations
- Extracurriculars
- Special talent
- Character
- First-gen status
- Legacy status
- Where you're from
- Not considered
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
Clemson rates course rigor as Very Important.
MoreLess
Rigor means AP, IB, and dual enrollment carry real weight — make sure your mix of AP or IB courses is strong.
Clemson 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)
Clemson just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-Clemson essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
36.6% of Clemson classes have fewer than 20 students.
36.6%
under 20 students
46.6%
20 to 49
16.8%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. Clemson CDS 2025–26, I-3.
16:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
46.4%
first-years from out of state
18.8%
of men in fraternities
40.3%
of women in sororities
Who attends
- White75.2%
- Hispanic9.3%
- Black4.7%
- Multiracial4%
- Asian2.9%
- Unknown / other2.8%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. Clemson CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
70.7% of Clemson students graduate in 4 years.
70.7%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
87.5%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
94.1%
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
78.1% finish in 6 years, against 87.5% of all students.
A 9.4-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 Clemson.
Clemson is a small town in the Blue Ridge foothills of upstate South Carolina, sitting on the shore of Lake Hartwell with the university's land wrapped around it.
MoreLess
Downtown is a walk from campus rather than a drive, which makes the whole place feel like one continuous campus, and it is genuinely beautiful — water on one side, mountains on the other. The trade-off is isolation and scale: this is a town of under 20,000 people, football weekends dominate the autumn calendar, and there is no big city nearby. Greenville is about 45 minutes east and is the closest thing to an urban outlet; Atlanta and Charlotte are both roughly two hours. A car matters here more than it would at a school in a city.
The City
College town
Clemson, SC
Best For
Notable alumni
Notable Alumni
Harvey Gantt
Enrolled in January 1963 as the first Black student at Clemson, admitted only after a federal appeals court ordered it. He graduated with honors in architecture, built a practice designing schools and civic buildings across the Carolinas, and in 1983 was elected the first Black mayor of Charlotte.
Class of 1965
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson
NASA's first female launch director. She earned a computer engineering degree here, went to work at Kennedy Space Center after graduation, and ran the countdown for the Artemis I launch.
Class of 1988
Nikki Haley
Governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017 and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2017 to 2019. She took her accounting degree here and was named to Clemson's board of trustees in 2021.
Class of 1994
Jeffrey Brown
Chief executive of the online bank Ally Financial for eight years and American Banker's Banker of the Year for 2022. He studied economics here.
Class of 1995
Nancy O'Dell
Co-anchor of Entertainment Tonight from 2011 to 2019, after more than a decade hosting Access Hollywood. She graduated summa cum laude in marketing here and returned in 2013 as commencement speaker.
Class of 1990
Brian Dawkins
Nine-time Pro Bowl safety for the Philadelphia Eagles and the first Clemson player elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He played here from 1992 to 1995 and led the ACC in interceptions as a senior.
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
Traditions
Traditions
Howard's Rock and Running Down the Hill
A rock carried back from Death Valley, California and given to coach Frank Howard sits on a pedestal at the top of the hill above Memorial Stadium's east end. It was mounted in 1966 and became ritual in 1967: players touch the rock, then run down the hill into the stadium.
The First Friday Parade
Since 1974, the football season opens with a parade down Highway 93 on the Friday before the first home game — Tiger Band, spirit squads and student organizations, with the town and campus lining the road. It is the unofficial start of the fall.
Solid Orange Friday
Every Friday, students, faculty, staff and alumni wear Clemson orange. It is the everyday version of the school's spirit — the whole campus visibly changes colour once a week, football season or not.
The $2 bill
When Georgia Tech ended its football series with Clemson in 1977, Clemson fans stamped $2 bills with tiger paws and spent them in Atlanta to show what the visiting crowd was worth. Fans still take stamped $2 bills to away games.
Clemson Ice Cream and Blue Cheese
The university has made its own ice cream since the 1920s and its own blue cheese since 1941, when a dairy professor first cured it in the abandoned Stumphouse Tunnel. Both are sold on campus at the student-run '55 Exchange.
Weekend escapes from Clemson
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Clemson
Greenville, SC
45 minutesThe nearest real city and the region's job market — a revitalised downtown built around Falls Park on the Reedy, the Liberty Bridge over the waterfall, and the Swamp Rabbit Trail.
Lake Jocassee and Devils Fork State Park
45 minutesA clear-water mountain lake in the Jocassee Gorges, reached through Devils Fork State Park — kayaking, camping, and waterfalls that can only be seen from the water.
Asheville, NC
1 hour 45 minutesA mountain city with a dense restaurant and brewery scene, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Biltmore Estate — the standard overnight trip.
Atlanta, GA
2 hours 15 minutesThe nearest major metro, straight down I-85 — professional sport, concerts, museums, and the airport most out-of-state students fly home from.
Charleston, SC
4 hoursThe long-weekend trip — the historic peninsula, the food, and the Folly Beach and Sullivan's Island coast beyond it.
Getting there and game days
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Greenville-Spartanburg International (GSP)
50 minutes from campus
For international flights: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) — about 2 hours 15 minutes by road.
Pro sports nearby
- Atlanta Braves MLB
- Atlanta Falcons NFL
- Atlanta Hawks NBA
- Carolina Panthers NFL
- Charlotte Hornets NBA
Internships and jobs nearby
Career Proximity
Clemson sits at the western end of the I-85 corridor between Greenville and Spartanburg, one of the densest advanced-manufacturing regions in the country, and that is why engineering recruiting here is strong for a school in a town this small. BMW builds cars in Spartanburg, Michelin runs its North American business from Greenville, and Milliken has been headquartered in Spartanburg for generations. Clemson has planted its own campus in the middle of it: CU-ICAR, a 250-acre automotive research campus in Greenville founded with BMW, Michelin and Timken, where the automotive engineering graduate programs sit alongside company research teams. Closer in, Duke Energy's Oconee Nuclear Station is eight miles from campus. Finance and consulting mostly mean a drive — Charlotte and Atlanta are each about two hours.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- BMW Manufacturing
- Michelin North America
- Milliken & Company
- Duke Energy
- Prisma Health
Greenville — about 45 minutes east; Atlanta and Charlotte are each about 2 hours
Who thrives here
Who Thrives Here
Clemson is a 24,060-undergraduate campus where Greek life organizes a good deal of the social calendar — 40% of women join sororities against 19% of men in fraternities — and where classes stay mid-sized, with 36.6% under 20 students and a 16-to-1 student-faculty ratio. The money is where families should look hardest: Clemson meets 48% of demonstrated need and graduates leave owing about $39,700, so an out-of-state family paying roughly $40,900 in tuition and fees is covering most of that gap itself. For residents the arithmetic is a different question entirely, which is rather the point of applying from inside South Carolina.