At a Glance
Indiana admits 78.2% 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
Not reported by this school
receive need-based grant aid
$29,455
average debt at graduation
Indiana graduates carry an average of $29,455 in debt.
Merit Aid
12,388
students received merit aid
$6,901
average merit award
Getting In
Indiana admits 78.2% of applicants.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 42% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 14% of the class submitted
28.9% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
Indiana University Bloomington 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
34.7% of Indiana 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 Indiana, 34.7% 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)
41.5%
Live on campus
29.78%
Men in fraternities
21.81%
Women in sororities
20.06%
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."
Indiana's student body is 65.1% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
Indiana graduates 69.3% 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.
Indiana graduates 69.3% 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.
Indiana
69.3%
4-yr grad rate
Extra year cost: $28,801*
* 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.
80.2%
Overall 6-yr rate
69.9%
Pell recipient rate
A 10.3 point graduation gap between lower-income and overall students suggests financial or academic challenges for some students.
Freshman Retention
91.1%
91.1% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Bloomington.
Bloomington is a real town that happens to be built around a university, which is a different thing from a campus with shops attached. Kirkwood Avenue runs from the Sample Gates into a downtown with its own restaurants, venues and bookshops, and students spend their time there rather than commuting to somewhere more interesting — which matters, because fewer than a third of undergraduates live on campus. The surrounding country is limestone hills and lakes rather than flat Midwest farmland, so the outdoors is genuinely close. What you do not get is a city: Indianapolis is an hour north and supplies the airport, the pro sports and the big concerts, and Chicago is a four-hour drive.
Notable Alumni
Mark Cuban
Entrepreneur, investor and former owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who took a BS in management from the Kelley School.
Class of 1981
Will Shortz
Crossword editor of The New York Times, and the only person known to hold a degree in enigmatology — the study of puzzles — which he designed himself through IU's Individualized Major Program.
Class of 1974
Joshua Bell
Grammy-winning violinist and music director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, trained at the Jacobs School of Music.
Class of 1989
Hoagy Carmichael
Composer of "Stardust" and "Georgia on My Mind", who wrote his first songs as a student here while taking a law degree.
Class of 1926
Jane Pauley
Broadcast journalist, longtime host of NBC's Today and anchor of CBS Sunday Morning.
Class of 1972
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
College town
Bloomington, IN
Best For
Traditions
The Little 500
A bicycle race run since 1951, billed as the largest collegiate bike race in the United States and the centre of what students call the World's Greatest College Weekend. Riders qualify in teams, the proceeds fund working-student scholarships — more than $24 million so far — and the race is the one the film Breaking Away was built on.
The Rose Well House
A limestone pavilion built in 1908 over the cistern that once supplied the campus with water. Tradition holds that a couple who kiss inside it at the stroke of midnight will stay together, and it remains a standing spot for proposals.
Hoosier Hysteria
The basketball season's opening night at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, and the annual reminder that in Indiana the sport is closer to a civic religion than a pastime.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Bloomington
Brown County State Park
30 minutesIndiana's largest state park — wooded ridges and covered bridges, and the state's best-known autumn colour.
Indianapolis
1 hourThe nearest city, and where the airport, the pro sports and the touring concerts are.
Louisville
1 hour 45 minutesBourbon country and a bigger music and food scene, just across the Ohio River.
Chicago
4 hoursThe big-weekend trip, and the international airport for students flying home overseas.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Indianapolis International Airport (IND)
1 hour from campus
For international flights: Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) — about 4 hours by road.
Pro sports nearby
- Indianapolis Colts NFL
- Indiana Pacers NBA
- Indiana Fever WNBA
- Indy Eleven USL
Career Proximity
Indiana's pipeline runs through the Kelley School, which is why a third of the degrees conferred here are in business or marketing and why finance, consulting and accounting firms recruit on campus at scale. Indianapolis an hour north is the nearest employment market of size — Eli Lilly anchors a deep pharmaceutical and life-sciences cluster, and the insurance and health-benefits sector around Elevance is unusually large for a city that size. The Jacobs School operates on a separate track entirely, feeding orchestras, opera houses and conservatory faculties rather than a regional job market.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Eli Lilly and Company
- Elevance Health
- Cook Medical
- Salesforce
- Indiana University Health
Indianapolis — about 1 hour north; Chicago is roughly 4 hours northwest
Who Thrives Here
Indiana is an 1,800-acre campus of 38,093 undergraduates where the front door is genuinely open — 78.2% of applicants are admitted — and the sorting happens after you arrive rather than before. A third of every degree it confers is in business or marketing (33.3%), which tells you where the gravity sits, while the Jacobs School of Music pulls an entirely different student onto the same quad; few campuses ask one library to serve both. Only 29.8% of undergraduates live on campus and about 22% of men and 20% of women join Greek life, so the centre of social life is Bloomington itself — a genuine college town rather than a city — and the spring bicycle race, the Little 500, is the weekend the calendar is built around. The trade-offs here are financial and they are specific: Indiana meets 63.9% of demonstrated need, borrowers leave owing $29,455, and 69.3% finish in four years against 80.2% in six. One more thing to check before you decide: its CDS still records the SAT or ACT as required for some applicants, so test-optional is not a safe assumption at this school.