What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$15,316 to $26,266 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: $28,596 a year in-state. Average need-based aid package: $14,015.Aid and debt
$32,536
average debt at graduation
7,393
students got merit aid
about 32% of undergraduates
$6,056
average merit award
Not reported by this school: share receiving need-based grants.
Getting In
Key dates
Test scores
SAT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 1130–1320 · 22% of the class submitted
ACT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 21–28 · 60% of the class submitted
What they value
- Very important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- GPA
- SAT/ACT scores
- Considered
- Class rank
- Recommendations
- Special talent
- Character
- In-state residency
- Not considered
- Personal essay
- Extracurriculars
- First-gen status
- Legacy status
- Where you're from
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
Iowa 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.
Iowa 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)
Iowa just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-Iowa essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
48.5% of Iowa classes have fewer than 20 students.
48.5%
under 20 students
36.1%
20 to 49
15.4%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. Iowa CDS 2025–26, I-3.
17:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
28%
live on campus
15%
of men in fraternities
17%
of women in sororities
Who attends
- White74.2%
- Hispanic8.7%
- Unknown / other4.9%
- Asian4.2%
- Multiracial3.9%
- Black2.7%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. Iowa CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
60.7% of Iowa students graduate in 4 years.
60.7%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
75.8%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
90.9%
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
64.1% finish in 6 years, against 75.8% of all students.
An 11.7-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 Iowa City.
Iowa City is a small city that has organised itself around two things: writing and medicine.
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It is a UNESCO City of Literature - the third named in the world and the first in the United States - and that is not decoration, it is the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the first creative writing program in the country, plus the reading series, the presses and the bookshops that grew up around it. Across the river sits Iowa's only comprehensive academic medical centre, close to 20,000 staff, which means an undergraduate in the health sciences is walking to a teaching hospital rather than commuting to one. Campus is split by the Iowa River, with the Pentacrest and the Old Capitol on one bank and the hospital and Kinnick Stadium on the other, and downtown is a pedestrian mall a short walk from class rather than a drive away. What you do not get is a metropolitan area: Cedar Rapids is 30 minutes north, Des Moines two hours west, Chicago three and a half hours east. The winter is long and genuinely cold.
The City
College town
Iowa City, IA
Best For
Notable alumni
Notable Alumni
George Gallup
Founder of the Gallup Poll, who brought scientific sampling to the measurement of public opinion. He took three degrees at Iowa, founded the Quill and Scroll journalism society on this campus in 1926, taught here, and started the poll that carries his name in 1935.
Class of 1923
James Van Allen
Space physicist whose instruments aboard Explorer 1 found the belts of trapped radiation encircling the Earth that now carry his name. He took his master's and doctorate here and spent his career on this faculty; the physics building is Van Allen Hall.
Class of 1939
Rita Dove
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and the first Black Poet Laureate of the United States, who came through the Iowa Writers' Workshop - the first creative writing program in the country, founded here in 1936.
Caitlin Clark
The all-time leading scorer in NCAA Division I basketball, women's or men's, and winner of the Naismith and Wooden awards in her final season here. She was the first pick of the 2024 WNBA draft and took a marketing degree at Iowa.
Class of 2024
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
Traditions
Traditions
The Wave
At the end of the first quarter of every home football game, the players, the coaches, the officials and the whole of Kinnick Stadium turn to face the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital next door and wave to the children and families watching from its upper floors. It is the one tradition in college sport built around a hospital rather than an opponent, and it tells you what this campus is organised around.
Live from Prairie Lights
The Writers' Workshop's public reading series, held downtown at Prairie Lights Books, where Workshop faculty and graduates read new work to a room anyone can walk into. Between that, the Iowa City Book Festival and the university's own presses, hearing writers read their unfinished work is a normal Wednesday here rather than a special event.
Homecoming and the Corn Monument
Iowa has held Homecoming since November 1912, and the students who run it still build a monument out of corn every autumn - the archive photographs go back to the 1920s. The week is run entirely by a student council, and the parade draws alumni back from across the country.
Weekend escapes from Iowa City
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Iowa City
The Amana Colonies
30 minutesSeven villages founded by a German communal religious society in the 1850s, still standing as a national historic landmark district - bakeries, wineries, woollen mills and the closest thing to a day trip that feels like leaving the state.
Maquoketa Caves State Park
About 1 hour 15 minutesMore caves than any other state park in Iowa, strung along a wooded limestone gorge with a boardwalk trail between them - the standard escape when the landscape starts feeling flat.
Chicago
3 hours 30 minutesThe big-weekend trip, and the international airport for students flying home overseas.
Getting there and game days
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
The Eastern Iowa Airport (CID)
30 minutes from campus
For international flights: Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) — about 3 hours 30 minutes by road.
Pro sports nearby
- Cedar Rapids Kernels MiLBAbout 30 minutes away
- Iowa Cubs MiLBAbout 2 hours away
- Iowa Wild AHLAbout 2 hours away
- Chicago Bears NFLAbout 3 hours 30 minutes away
Internships and jobs nearby
Career Proximity
Iowa's graduates mostly stay in the upper Midwest, and the biggest employers are within walking distance of the lecture halls: the university itself and its hospitals top the school's own list of where graduates go, followed by UnityPoint Health, the local school district and Collins Aerospace, the avionics manufacturer 30 minutes north in Cedar Rapids. The career centre counts 1,353 distinct employers hiring Iowa graduates, Microsoft, Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and Procter & Gamble among them. What that means practically is that a health-sciences or engineering student can hold a serious job without relocating for the summer, while finance and consulting recruiting is a Des Moines drive (two hours) or a Chicago one (three and a half).
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics
- Collins Aerospace
- UnityPoint Health
- Procter & Gamble
- Iowa City Community School District
Cedar Rapids, about 30 minutes north; Des Moines is about 2 hours west and Chicago about 3 hours 30 minutes east
Who thrives here
Who Thrives Here
Iowa admits 79.9% of applicants, so the question here is rarely whether you get in. It is a large public — 23,407 undergraduates, 17 students per faculty member — and unusually for that size, 48.5% of its sections have fewer than 20 students. What sets it apart is writing: the Iowa Writers' Workshop is why a lot of students apply, and Iowa City is a UNESCO City of Literature. Only 28% of undergraduates live in university housing and Greek life is a moderate presence at 15% of men and 17% of women, so most upperclass students rent in town. The money is the argument against it. Iowa meets 51.0% of demonstrated need on average and its graduates carry $32,536 in average debt — the figures to weigh against a 60.7% four-year graduation rate and 75.8% within six. 90.9% come back for a second year.