At a Glance
Houston admits 75.8% 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
$22,495
average debt at graduation
Houston graduates carry an average of $22,495 in debt.
Merit Aid
1,000
students received merit aid
$3,985
average merit award
Getting In
Houston admits 75.8% of applicants.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 55% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 7% of the class submitted
25.4% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
University of Houston 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
32.8% of Houston 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 Houston, 32.8% 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)
23:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
Live on campus
16%
Men in fraternities
3%
Women in sororities
4%
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."
Houston's student body is 15.7% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
Houston graduates 43% 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.
Houston graduates 43% 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.
Houston
43%
4-yr grad rate
Extra year cost: $26,185*
* 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.
65.7%
Overall 6-yr rate
63.5%
Pell recipient rate
Lower-income students graduate at nearly the same rate as their peers — a sign of strong institutional support.
Freshman Retention
86.6%
86.6% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Houston.
UH sits on a wooded 600-acre campus about three miles southeast of downtown Houston, and it is a genuine campus — trees, a plaza, its own stadium and arena — dropped inside a city with no zoning that sprawls in every direction around it. METRO's Purple Line runs from the edge of campus into downtown, which is unusual for a Texas public and means a student without a car is not stuck. What defines this place is who goes here. Almost nobody is from somewhere else: 2% of undergraduates come from outside Texas, and most are from greater Houston. Hispanic students are the largest group on campus and white students are under a sixth of undergraduates, which makes UH one of the most ethnically mixed research universities in the country and both a federally designated Hispanic-Serving and an AANAPISI institution. The trade-off is the one every commuter campus has: 84% of undergraduates live off campus, so the 7 p.m. version of this school is thinner than the 1 p.m. version, and the social life you get is largely the one you go out and build. First-years are the exception — 36% of them live in the residence halls — and the university is openly trying to change the ratio, with a 1,000-bed first-year hall due in 2027. Add Gulf Coast heat and humidity for most of the year and a hurricane season that is part of the local calendar.
Notable Alumni
Elizabeth Warren
United States Senator from Massachusetts since 2013 and the person who conceived and set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She had dropped out of George Washington University and finished her bachelor's here in 1970 in speech pathology and audiology, commuting to a campus that cost her $50 a semester; she came back later to teach at the UH Law Center for five years before Texas, Penn and Harvard.
Class of 1970
Bernard A. Harris Jr.
The first African American to walk in space, on a 1995 Space Shuttle mission, and a physician who flew twice for NASA. He grew up in Houston and took his biology degree here in 1978 before medical school, the Mayo Clinic and a NASA research fellowship. He calls UH his launching pad and says it was his first and only choice; he was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2025.
Class of 1978
Jim Parsons
Played Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory for twelve seasons and won four Emmys for it. A native Houstonian, he arrived at UH as a radio and television major and switched only after his first elective acting class; he graduated from the School of Theatre and Dance in 1996 and was a founding member of a scrappy Houston theatre company while still a student.
Class of 1996
Hakeem Olajuwon
Two-time NBA champion, two-time Finals MVP and a Naismith Hall of Famer, who came from Lagos, Nigeria having barely played basketball and anchored the Phi Slama Jama teams that reached three straight Final Fours. He played for the Cougars from 1981 to 1984 and left after his junior year for the NBA draft; his No. 34 is retired by both the Cougars and the Houston Rockets.
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
Major city
Houston, TX
Best For
Traditions
Frontier Fiesta
A spring festival founded in 1939 that LIFE magazine called "the Greatest College Show on Earth" in 1958. It went dark during the war, ran again through 1959, and was restarted in 1991. Today it is variety shows staged by student organizations, free concerts, carnival booths and a barbecue cook-off — the oldest thing on this campus and still the largest student-run one.
The Cougar Sign
Fold the ring finger and thumb of your right hand toward the palm. It dates to 1953, when Shasta I — the live cougar mascot — lost a toe in a cage door on the way to a game in Austin and rival students mocked the injury by making the gesture. UH took it and made it the sign you see raised across a whole stadium.
Blessing of the Rings
Before each Ring Ceremony, every class ring spends the night with UH's live cougar mascot, Shasta VII, at the Houston Zoo. The mascot runs through the smaller rituals too — before a big game students rub the paws of the two bronze cougars in Cullen Family Plaza, in front of the E. Cullen Building.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Houston
Galveston
1 hourThe nearest Gulf beach, about 50 miles down I-45: a seawall you can bike, the Strand's Victorian downtown, and a pier amusement park. Close enough to be an afternoon rather than a trip.
Brazos Bend State Park
1 hourBayou trails with wild alligators on the bank, and the George Observatory inside the park — a Houston Museum of Natural Science site that opens its telescopes to the public on Saturday nights. The nearest genuinely dark sky to a city that has none.
Austin
2 hours 45 minutesThe state capital and the nearest complete change of scene, straight out US-290; the Hill Country swimming holes start just west of it.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
William P. Hobby Airport (HOU)
20 minutes from campus
For international flights: George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) — about 35 minutes by car.
Pro sports nearby
- Houston Texans NFL
- Houston Rockets NBA
- Houston Astros MLB
- Houston Dynamo FC MLS
Career Proximity
Houston is the headquarters city of the American energy industry, and campus is three miles from downtown. Chevron moved its corporate headquarters here in 2024 and ExxonMobil's is up in Spring; ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, SLB, Baker Hughes and Phillips 66 all run their businesses from this metro. The second engine is closer still — the Texas Medical Center, which describes itself as the largest medical complex in the world and employs more than 120,000 people, is roughly three miles west of campus. NASA's Johnson Space Center is about 20 miles southeast in Clear Lake, and Port Houston is the country's top port by foreign waterborne tonnage. For a student who does not want to relocate for a summer, few campuses in the country put this much industry inside a half-hour radius.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Chevron
- ExxonMobil
- MD Anderson Cancer Center
- Memorial Hermann Health System
- NASA Johnson Space Center
Downtown Houston — about 3 miles northwest, and a direct METRORail Purple Line ride from the edge of campus
Who Thrives Here
Houston admits 75.8% of applicants and enrolls 40,366 undergraduates, and no racial group is close to a majority: white students are 15.7% of the campus. It is a commuter university first — 16% live in university housing, Greek life reaches 3% of men and 4% of women, and most students are travelling in across a very large metro. Price is the argument for it: $11,888 in state and $27,776 out of it, with graduates carrying $22,495 in average debt. The arguments against sit in the aid and the outcomes — the school meets 56.9% of demonstrated need, 43.0% of students finish in four years, and 65.7% within six. One number cuts the other way, and it is the one worth knowing: students who received a Pell Grant finish within six at 63.5%, against 65.7% for the class as a whole. Very few schools this accessible close that gap.