At a Glance
Florida State admits 24.2% 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
45.1%
receive need-based grant aid
$18,643
average debt at graduation
Florida State graduates carry an average of $18,643 in debt.
Merit Aid
2,827
students received merit aid
$3,883
average merit award
Getting In
Florida State admits 24.2% of applicants.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 64% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 36% of the class submitted
75.7% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
Florida State University considers your essay Important — a strong essay can differentiate an otherwise average application. Demonstrated interest is Not Considered here — campus visits and emails to admissions won't affect your odds.
Student Life
62.5% of Florida State 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 Florida State, 62.5% 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 2024–25, Section I-3 (class sizes)
17:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
From out of state (freshman class)
17.7%
Live on campus
20.4%
Men in fraternities
17.8%
Women in sororities
25.1%
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."
Florida State's student body is 57.3% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
Florida State graduates 74% 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.
Florida State graduates 74% 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.
Florida State
74%
4-yr grad rate
Extra year cost: $25,720*
* In-state cost of attendance. Out-of-state students pay significantly more.
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2024–25, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
85.6%
Overall 6-yr rate
83.1%
Pell recipient rate
Lower-income students graduate at nearly the same rate as their peers — a sign of strong institutional support.
Freshman Retention
95.9%
95.9% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Tallahassee.
Tallahassee is Florida's state capital and looks almost nothing like the rest of the state — rolling hills, live oaks hung with Spanish moss, and no beach anywhere in the city. FSU sits a few blocks from the Capitol, and with Florida A&M and a community college in the same town the population skews heavily toward students, which keeps the cost of living low and the social calendar full but empties the place out over the summer. The Gulf is about 45 minutes south and the nearest major city is a four-hour drive, so this is somewhere you settle into rather than a base for weekend city trips.
Notable Alumni
Sara Blakely
Founded Spanx after cutting the feet off a pair of pantyhose, grew it into a global shapewear brand, and became one of the youngest self-made women billionaires; she is a National Inventors Hall of Fame inductee.
Norman Thagard
NASA astronaut on five spaceflights who in 1995 became the first American to launch aboard a Russian Soyuz and to live aboard the Mir space station, running 28 experiments across 115 days in orbit before returning on Atlantis.
Barry Jenkins
Wrote and directed Moonlight, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2017 and earned him a shared Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Jim Morrison
Frontman and lyricist of The Doors, one of the defining American rock bands of the 1960s.
Charlie Crist
Governor of Florida from 2007 to 2011, and later a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for the Tampa Bay area.
Charlie Ward
Won the 1993 Heisman Trophy by one of the largest margins in the award's history and quarterbacked Florida State to its first national championship in the 1994 Orange Bowl; he remains the only Heisman winner ever to play in the NBA.
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
Mid-size city
Tallahassee, FL
Best For
Traditions
Osceola and Renegade
Before every home football game a student dressed as the Seminole leader Osceola rides an Appaloosa named Renegade to midfield and plants a flaming garnet-and-gold spear in the turf. It has run since 1978 with the express approval of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which helped shape the regalia and the ritual — and that relationship is why FSU was granted an exemption from the NCAA's 2005 ban on Native American imagery.
The War Chant
The chant and its accompanying arm motion grew out of the student section at Doak Campbell Stadium during a 1984 game against Auburn, when fans kept singing a Marching Chiefs melody after the band had stopped playing. By 1986 the entire stadium was doing it, and it has since been copied — and argued over — well beyond Tallahassee.
The Sod Cemetery
In 1962 a professor dared the team to bring back a piece of turf from a win at Georgia, and the captain returned with a fistful of grass. Florida State players have dug up sod after designated road victories ever since, and more than a hundred bronze headstones now mark the plot near the practice fields, one for each 'sod game' won.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Tallahassee
Wakulla Springs State Park
30 minutesOne of the largest and deepest freshwater springs in the world, with glass-bottom boat tours, manatees in winter and a 1930s lodge — the standard cheap afternoon out of Tallahassee.
St. George Island & Apalachicola
1 hour 30 minutesA barrier island of white sand with a state park at its eastern end, reached through an old Gulf oyster town. This is the beach students actually drive to, and it stays quiet compared with the rest of Florida's coast.
Atlanta
4 hours 15 minutesThe nearest major city and the region's job market — pro sport, concerts, and the airport most students connect through to get home or abroad.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Tallahassee International Airport (TLH)
15 minutes from campus
For international flights: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) — about 4 hours 15 minutes by road.
Pro sports nearby
- Jacksonville Jaguars NFLAbout 2 hours 30 minutes away
- Orlando Magic NBAAbout 4 hours away
- Atlanta Braves MLBAbout 4 hours 15 minutes away
Career Proximity
Tallahassee is the seat of Florida's government, so the legislature, the state agencies and the Florida Supreme Court sit within a few minutes of campus — which makes term-time internships in government, law and policy unusually easy to hold down here. The other local draw is research: FSU operates the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, the largest and highest-powered magnet lab in the world, out of Innovation Park just south of campus, alongside a small cluster of engineering employers. What Tallahassee does not have is a corporate centre, so students chasing finance, consulting or tech generally look to Jacksonville, Orlando or Atlanta for a summer.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- State of Florida
- Florida State University
- Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare
- National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
- Danfoss Turbocor
Jacksonville, about 2 hours 30 minutes east; Atlanta about 4 hours 15 minutes north
Who Thrives Here
Florida State is a 488-acre campus a few blocks from the Florida Capitol, in a city that looks nothing like the rest of the state — no beach, and a population that empties out every summer. The numbers describe a school that is cheap to attend and hard to leave without a degree: 95.9% of first-years return, 74.0% graduate in four years and 85.6% within six, and its Pell recipients reach 83.1%, a gap of barely two points where most schools open a much wider one. Classes run smaller than the size of the place suggests — 62.5% of sections have fewer than 20 students, at 17 to 1 — and business and marketing takes 23.0% of the degrees it confers. Campus life leans Greek rather than residential: 17.8% of men and 25.1% of women join, while only 20.4% of undergraduates live in university housing, and the traditions are unusually literal ones — a student rides an Appaloosa to midfield and plants a burning spear before home games, and players dig up sod after designated road wins and bury it under bronze headstones by the practice fields. Two things to settle before applying. It requires the SAT or ACT, with a middle 50% of 1290-1400, so a student without scores has no route in. And it meets 71% of demonstrated need, which matters even at this price. Borrowers leave owing $18,643, which is less than one year of the $23,200 it charges an out-of-state student.