At a Glance
Mizzou admits 78.5% 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
Not reported by this school
receive need-based grant aid
$27,724
average debt at graduation
Mizzou graduates carry an average of $27,724 in debt.
Merit Aid
9,317
students received merit aid
$8,827
average merit award
Getting In
Mizzou admits 78.5% of applicants.
This school reports SAT section scores but leaves the composite range blank, so there is no mid-50% band to chart.
Mid-50% by section: Reading 580–670 · Math 570–660.
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 60% of the class submitted
34% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
University of Missouri 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
42.3% of Mizzou 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 Mizzou, 42.3% 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 2024–25, Section I-3 (class sizes)
17:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
From out of state (freshman class)
33.5%
Live on campus
27%
Men in fraternities
26%
Women in sororities
32%
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."
Mizzou's student body is 79% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
Mizzou graduates 55.7% 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.
Mizzou graduates 55.7% 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.
Mizzou
55.7%
4-yr grad rate
Extra year cost: $31,713*
* In-state cost of attendance. Out-of-state students pay significantly more.
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2024–25, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
74.9%
Overall 6-yr rate
65.2%
Pell recipient rate
A 9.7 point graduation gap between lower-income and overall students suggests financial or academic challenges for some students.
Freshman Retention
92.7%
92.7% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Columbia.
Columbia is a Midwestern college town of about 130,000, sitting almost exactly halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City on I-70 — a location that splits Mizzou fans' pro-sports loyalties between both metros. The university's six-column Francis Quadrangle, all that survives of the original 1840s Academic Hall, anchors a compact downtown-adjacent campus that two smaller colleges (Stephens and Columbia College) also call home.
Notable Alumni
Sam Walton
Earned a bachelor's degree in economics before going on to found Walmart, which grew into the world's largest retailer by revenue.
Class of 1940
Jim Lehrer
Studied journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism before becoming the longtime anchor of PBS NewsHour and moderating twelve U.S. presidential debates.
Class of 1956
Brad Pitt
Studied journalism at Mizzou and left one credit short of graduating to move to Los Angeles, going on to become one of Hollywood's most prominent actors and producers.
Max Scherzer
Pitched for the Missouri Tigers before a Major League Baseball career that has won three Cy Young Awards and eight All-Star selections.
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
College town
Columbia, MO
Best For
Traditions
Homecoming, Invented Here (1911)
Mizzou says it held the first Homecoming as we know it in 1911, when athletic director Chester Brewer invited alumni to 'come home' for the football game against Kansas — a parade and bonfire built around the game drew nearly 10,000 alumni back to campus. Baylor and Illinois both make earlier claims, but Missouri's version is the one most histories of the tradition start with.
M-I-Z / Z-O-U Chant
The official call-and-response cheer of the university — one half of a crowd yells 'M-I-Z' and the other answers 'Z-O-U' — used at every game, at orientation, and as an all-purpose greeting between Mizzou people anywhere.
Tiger Walk Through the Columns
Incoming students walk through the six surviving Ionic columns of the original 1840s Academic Hall at the start of their first year, and walk back through them at commencement — the same columns that stayed standing after the building burned down in 1892.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Columbia
St. Louis, MO
About 2 hoursThe nearer of Missouri's two big cities, with the Gateway Arch, Forest Park, and the Cardinals.
Kansas City, MO
About 2 hoursThe other Missouri metro, and the other half of the state's split sports loyalties — barbecue, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, and the Chiefs.
Lake of the Ozarks
About 1 hourMissouri's classic lake-house weekend, especially over Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Columbia Regional Airport (COU)
About 20 minutes from campus
For international flights: St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) — about 2 hours by road.
Pro sports nearby
- St. Louis Cardinals MLBAbout 2 hours away
- Kansas City Chiefs NFLAbout 2 hours away
- Kansas City Royals MLBAbout 2 hours away
Career Proximity
Columbia sits almost exactly halfway between Kansas City and St. Louis, so an internship here means choosing a metro rather than defaulting to one — St. Louis's corporate and biotech base to the east, Kansas City's logistics and finance scene to the west, both about a two-hour drive.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Boeing
- Anheuser-Busch
- Cerner (Oracle Health)
- Edward Jones
- Garmin
St. Louis and Kansas City, both about 2 hours
Who Thrives Here
Missouri admits 78.5% of applicants and doesn't require the SAT or ACT (just 10% of enrolled first-years submit an SAT score, 60% an ACT), so it's within reach for a wide range of academic profiles — enrolled first-years who do submit scores run 580-670 on SAT EBRW, 570-660 on SAT Math, and 23-30 on the ACT. What sets it apart academically is the Missouri School of Journalism, founded in 1908 as the world's first, and Mizzou's own claim to have invented the modern Homecoming format in 1911, when it invited alumni back for a parade and bonfire built around the football game against Kansas — a tradition still marked every fall by the M-I-Z / Z-O-U chant. Social life runs heavily through Greek houses — 26% of men and 32% of women join a fraternity or sorority — and only 27% of undergraduates live on campus, so most student life plays out off it. In-state tuition and fees run $15,548 a year (out-of-state, $37,820), and aid doesn't fully close the gap: the school meets 71% of a first-year's demonstrated need on average, and students who borrow graduate owing about $27,724. The trade-off to know going in is pace to a degree — 55.7% finish in four years, though 74.9% finish within six.