At a Glance
Villanova admits 28.1% 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.
Debt at Graduation
37.6%
receive need-based grant aid
$43,841
average debt at graduation
Villanova graduates carry an average of $43,841 in debt.
Merit Aid
560
students received merit aid
$34,235
average merit award
Getting In
Villanova admits 28.1% of applicants.
Villanova University's Early Decision applicants are admitted at nearly 2x the rate of Regular Decision applicants — 59.8% vs 25.9%. Note: ED is binding — you commit to attending if admitted.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 19% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 9% of the class submitted
81% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
Villanova University 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
46.3% of Villanova 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 Villanova, 46.3% 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 2025–26, Section I-3 (class sizes)
9:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
From out of state (freshman class)
93.9%
Live on campus
82%
Men in fraternities
17%
Women in sororities
39%
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."
Villanova's student body is 67.7% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
Villanova graduates 89.4% 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.
Villanova graduates 89.4% 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.
Villanova
89.4%
4-yr grad rate
Most finish on time
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.
92.7%
Overall 6-yr rate
93%
Pell recipient rate
Lower-income students graduate at nearly the same rate as their peers — a sign of strong institutional support.
Freshman Retention
95.2%
95.2% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Villanova.
Villanova is a suburban campus on Philadelphia's historic Main Line, twelve miles west of the city, and the thing that decides daily life here is that three SEPTA train stops sit on campus. The Paoli/Thorndale Regional Rail line runs direct from campus to Center City in about thirty-five minutes, and a free university shuttle covers the Main Line towns — Ardmore, Bryn Mawr, Wayne — in between. The trade-off is honest: this is a green, gothic, self-contained campus rather than a city one, so Philadelphia is something students go to rather than something they live in.
Notable Alumni
Pope Leo XIV
Elected the 267th pope in May 2025, the first American and the first Augustinian friar to hold the office. Born Robert Francis Prevost, he took a mathematics degree here in 1977 and entered the Order of St. Augustine that September, later spending two decades as a missionary and bishop in Peru.
Class of 1977
Jim Croce
Singer-songwriter behind "Time in a Bottle" and "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown", inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1990. He led the Villanova Singers as an undergraduate and graduated in 1965, eight years before he died in a plane crash at thirty.
Class of 1965
Jalen Brunson
Led Villanova to the 2018 national championship as the consensus college player of the year, and is now an All-NBA guard and captain of the New York Knicks. He finished his communications degree in three years.
Class of 2018
Chris Gheysens
President and chief executive of Wawa since 2013, running the roughly 1,000-store chain that is a fixture of the region the university sits in. He took an accounting degree from the Villanova School of Business in 1993 and started out at Deloitte.
Class of 1993
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
Major city
Villanova, PA
Best For
Traditions
Special Olympics Fall Festival
The largest student-run Special Olympics event in the world, held on campus every November for thirty-seven consecutive years. More than 1,100 athletes compete across six sports, supported by a student committee of over a hundred and around 1,100 student volunteers — the clearest single expression of what the Augustinian service commitment means here in practice.
St. Thomas of Villanova Day of Service
One September Saturday when the whole university — students, staff, faculty, alumni and families — fans out to more than a hundred service sites across greater Philadelphia. It has run since 2006 and now draws over four thousand people in a single day.
Wildcat basketball, on campus and downtown
The season opens with Hoops Mania at the Finneran Pavilion in October, and Villanova splits its home schedule between that on-campus arena and the Wells Fargo Center in South Philadelphia. Big East basketball is the one thing that reliably pulls the campus into the city.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Villanova
Philadelphia
About 35 minutes by trainDirect from the Regional Rail stop on campus to Suburban Station in Center City, which is why a car is optional here.
Valley Forge National Historical Park
About 15 minutesThirty-five hundred acres of Revolutionary War ground with twenty-six miles of hiking and biking trails, close enough for an afternoon. No public transport reaches it.
New York City
About 2 hours 30 minutes by trainChange at 30th Street Station onto the Northeast Corridor — long enough to be a weekend rather than a day.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Philadelphia International Airport (PHL)
20 minutes from campus
Flies international — you can start a trip abroad from here.
Pro sports nearby
- Philadelphia Eagles NFL
- Philadelphia Phillies MLB
- Philadelphia 76ers NBA
- Philadelphia Flyers NHL
Career Proximity
Villanova sits at the western end of the Philadelphia job market and reaches it by commuter rail, which is why term-time internships here are a train ride rather than a summer relocation. The university's own career reporting points at accounting, financial services, hospital systems and engineering employers across the region.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- PricewaterhouseCoopers
- Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
- EY
- JPMorganChase
- Lockheed Martin
Center City Philadelphia — about 35 minutes by SEPTA Regional Rail from the station on campus
Who Thrives Here
Villanova admits 28.1% of applicants overall but 59.8% through early decision, so the binding application is a real lever here. It is a residential campus — 82% of undergraduates live in university housing — twelve miles from Philadelphia on the Main Line, with SEPTA Regional Rail stops on campus that reach Center City in about thirty-five minutes. Greek life is uneven by gender: 17% of men and 39% of women join. Service is not a brochure line here — the student-run Special Olympics Fall Festival has been held on campus every November for thirty-seven years. The academic delivery is what families pay for: 9 students per faculty member, 95.2% freshman retention, and 89.4% finishing in four years. The cost is the argument against it. Tuition and fees run $74,014, Villanova meets 83.5% of demonstrated need, and its graduates leave with $43,841 in average debt; 560 students receive non-need-based awards averaging $34,235, so merit money exists but reaches a small share of the class. Only 46.3% of classes have fewer than 20 students, which is fewer than a small private's reputation suggests.