At a Glance
Iowa admits 79.9% 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
$32,536
average debt at graduation
Iowa graduates carry an average of $32,536 in debt.
Merit Aid
7,393
students received merit aid
$6,056
average merit award
Getting In
Iowa admits 79.9% of applicants.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 22% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 60% of the class submitted
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
University of Iowa gives essays less weight than many schools — academics drive most admissions decisions here. Demonstrated interest is Not Considered here — campus visits and emails to admissions won't affect your odds.
Student Life
48.5% of Iowa 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 Iowa, 48.5% 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 2025–26, Section I-3 (class sizes)
17:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
Live on campus
28%
Men in fraternities
15%
Women in sororities
17%
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."
Iowa's student body is 74.2% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
Iowa graduates 60.7% 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.
Iowa graduates 60.7% 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.
Iowa
60.7%
4-yr grad rate
Extra year cost: $28,596*
* In-state cost of attendance. Out-of-state students pay significantly more.
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2025–26, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
75.8%
Overall 6-yr rate
64.1%
Pell recipient rate
An 11.7 point graduation gap between lower-income and overall students suggests financial or academic challenges for some students.
Freshman Retention
90.9%
90.9% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
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. 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.
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.
The City
College town
Iowa City, IA
Best For
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
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 & 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
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
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 53.0% 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.