What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$12,119 to $26,781 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: $34,391 a year in-state. Average need-based aid package: $17,875.Aid and debt
26.1%
receive need-based grants
$34,922
average debt at graduation
8,728
students got merit aid
about 32% of undergraduates
$8,990
average merit award
Getting In
Key dates
Test scores
SAT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 1058–1270 · 9% of the class submitted
ACT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 21–28 · 48% of the class submitted
28.1% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What they value
- Very important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- GPA
- Personal essay
- Considered
- Class rank
- SAT/ACT scores
- Recommendations
- Extracurriculars
- Special talent
- Character
- First-gen status
- Where you're from
- In-state residency
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Not considered
- Legacy status
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
Kentucky rates two things you can work on as Very Important: course rigor and your essay.
MoreLess
Rigor means AP, IB, and dual enrollment carry real weight — make sure your mix of AP or IB courses is strong. The essay is weighted like your GPA.
Kentucky 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)
Kentucky just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-Kentucky essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
32.5% of Kentucky classes have fewer than 20 students.
32.5%
under 20 students
52%
20 to 49
15.5%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. Kentucky CDS 2025–26, I-3.
18:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
39.9%
first-years from out of state
30.5%
live on campus
17.3%
of men in fraternities
28.1%
of women in sororities
Who attends
- White76.1%
- Hispanic7.1%
- Black6.1%
- Multiracial4.6%
- Asian3.4%
- Unknown / other1.1%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. Kentucky CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
57.8% of Kentucky students graduate in 4 years.
57.8%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
71.5%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
85.3%
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
58.4% finish in 6 years, against 71.5% of all students.
A 13.1-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 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.
MoreLess
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.
The City
Mid-size city
Lexington, KY
Best For
Notable alumni
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.
Traditions
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 from Lexington
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 and game days
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
Internships and jobs nearby
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
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 54.6% 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.