At a Glance
Kentucky admits 93.5% 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
26.1%
receive need-based grant aid
$34,922
average debt at graduation
Kentucky graduates carry an average of $34,922 in debt.
Merit Aid
8,728
students received merit aid
$8,990
average merit award
Getting In
Kentucky admits 93.5% of applicants.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 9% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 48% of the class submitted
28.1% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
University of Kentucky rates your personal essay as Very Important — equal weight to your GPA. Don't underestimate it. Demonstrated interest is Not Considered here — campus visits and emails to admissions won't affect your odds.
Student Life
32.5% of Kentucky 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 Kentucky, 32.5% 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)
18:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
From out of state (freshman class)
39.9%
Live on campus
30.5%
Men in fraternities
17.3%
Women in sororities
28.1%
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."
Kentucky's student body is 76.1% white.
Popular Majors
Majors data isn't reported yet for this school.
Will They Graduate?
Kentucky graduates 57.8% 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.
Kentucky graduates 57.8% 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.
Kentucky
57.8%
4-yr grad rate
Extra year cost: $34,391*
* 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.
71.5%
Overall 6-yr rate
58.4%
Pell recipient rate
A 13.1 point graduation gap between lower-income and overall students suggests financial or academic challenges for some students.
Freshman Retention
85.3%
85.3% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Lexington.
Lexington is a mid-size city that stops abruptly at horse country — drive ten minutes past campus in almost any direction and the white plank fences and thoroughbred farms of the Bluegrass start. Campus sits immediately south of a compact downtown, close enough that the North Campus residence halls are a short walk from Rupp Arena and the city centre. The other thing that shapes the place is medicine: UK HealthCare's academic medical centre, including Kentucky's only NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centre, is on this campus rather than across town, so hospital work and undergraduate classes share the same few blocks.
Notable Alumni
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Won the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for establishing that chromosomes carry heredity — the work that founded modern genetics. A Lexington native, he took both his bachelor's and master's degrees here, and UK's School of Biological Sciences is dedicated to his memory.
Class of 1886
Wendell Berry
Novelist, poet and essayist awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2010, with more than twenty-five books of poetry and a long cycle of novels set in rural Kentucky. He completed both a bachelor's and a master's degree in English here, then came back in 1964 to join the faculty.
Pat Riley
Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer who coached the Los Angeles Lakers to four NBA championships, including back-to-back titles in 1987 and 1988, and won another with the Miami Heat in 2006. He was an All-America here before turning pro.
Mitch McConnell
The longest-serving Senate party leader in American history, elected nine times to lead the Republican conference between 2006 and 2024, and Kentucky's longest-serving senator. He took his law degree here, where he was elected president of the Student Bar Association; his undergraduate degree is from Louisville.
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
Mid-size city
Lexington, KY
Best For
Traditions
Blue and White
UK's colours were settled by a necktie. Students had picked blue and light yellow before a football game against Centre College on 19 December 1891; when someone asked "What color blue?", Richard C. Stoll pulled off his tie and held it up, and that shade — close to a royal blue — was adopted. A year later white replaced the yellow, and the university made blue and white official in 1892.
The Wildcat
The nickname came from a road win over Illinois on 9 October 1909, after which the head of the military department told a chapel service that the Kentucky team had "fought like Wildcats." It stuck with fans and the press until the university adopted it. The costumed Wildcat followed much later, in 1976-77, and now turns up at academic events as often as athletic ones.
K Week
UK's five-day welcome programme before autumn classes begin, and by the university's own description one of its biggest annual traditions. Every new undergraduate is expected to take part, moving through college meetings, 'pick your path' department events and student-organisation nights with a K Team Leader — an upperclass student — alongside them.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Lexington
Red River Gorge
1 hourA canyon system in the Daniel Boone National Forest east of Lexington, with natural sandstone arches, long hiking trails and some of the best sport climbing in the country. The standard weekend for anyone who came for the outdoors.
Louisville
1 hour 15 minutesKentucky's largest city, straight west on I-64 — Churchill Downs and the Derby, a serious restaurant and music scene, and the closest thing to a big-city job market that is still an easy same-day trip.
Cincinnati
1 hour 20 minutesNorth across the Ohio River for professional sport, museums and a much larger airport than Lexington's. Close enough that students go up for a game and come back the same night.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Blue Grass Airport (LEX)
15 minutes from campus
For international flights: Nashville International (BNA) — about 3 hours 15 minutes by road.
Pro sports nearby
- Cincinnati Bengals NFLAbout 1 hour 20 minutes away
- Cincinnati Reds MLBAbout 1 hour 20 minutes away
- Louisville Bats MiLBAbout 1 hour 15 minutes away
Career Proximity
Two things sit within reach that most flagships have to send students away for: a full academic medical centre on the same campus as the classrooms, and the world's largest Toyota assembly plant twenty minutes north in Georgetown.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- UK HealthCare
- Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky
- Lexmark
- Valvoline
- Baptist Health Lexington
- Alltech
Downtown Lexington, walking distance
Who Thrives Here
Kentucky admits 93.5% of applicants, which puts it close to an open door for anyone who meets its requirements, and enrolls 27,386 undergraduates in Lexington with 18 students per faculty member and 32.5% of sections under 20. Its own Common Data Set says something worth noticing: Kentucky rates the application essay Very Important, alongside course rigor and GPA and above standardized test scores — unusual at a school this accessible, and a signal that the essay is doing real work in the file. On cost, UK meets 57.2% of demonstrated need and its graduates leave with $34,922 in average debt, the figure to weigh against a 57.8% four-year graduation rate and 71.5% within six. 85.3% come back for a second year.