At a Glance
West Virginia admits 85.1% of applicants.
What You'll Actually Pay
See what families at different income levels actually pay after aid.
Net price data temporarily unavailable. Visit each school's net price calculator directly.
Where the Sticker Price Goes
Sticker price
Not reported by this school
Debt at Graduation
49.8%
receive need-based grant aid
$36,010
average debt at graduation
West Virginia graduates carry an average of $36,010 in debt.
Merit Aid
5,215
students received merit aid
$9,041
average merit award
Getting In
West Virginia admits 85.1% of applicants.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 56% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 23% of the class submitted
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
West Virginia University 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
Class size distribution not reported by these schools' Common Data Sets.
Share of undergraduate class sections at each size, from CDS Section I-3. More red = more large lectures.
West Virginia data pending.
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)
19:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
From out of state (freshman class)
58.2%
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."
West Virginia's student body is 81.3% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
West Virginia graduates 48.4% 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.
West Virginia graduates 48.4% 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.
West Virginia
48.4%
4-yr grad rate
Data pending
* 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.
63.9%
Overall 6-yr rate
52.2%
Pell recipient rate
An 11.7 point graduation gap between lower-income and overall students suggests financial or academic challenges for some students.
Freshman Retention
83.4%
83.4% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Morgantown.
Morgantown is a true college town — WVU's enrollment is a large share of the city's population, and the campus is split across two hilltop areas linked by the PRT, an automated people-mover unique to the university. Downtown and the High Street strip supply the bars, coffee shops and music venues, and the Mon River Rail-Trail runs along the river at the edge of campus for running and biking. Pittsburgh, 90 minutes northwest, is where students go for a bigger city, a real airport and internships; the mountains of eastern West Virginia — whitewater, hiking, skiing — are just as close in the other direction. Home football weekends are the loudest version of the place: the town effectively runs on the Mountaineers' schedule.
Notable Alumni
Jerry West
NBA Hall of Famer and the silhouette behind the league's logo; led WVU to the 1959 NCAA championship game and was named that Final Four's Most Outstanding Player.
Class of 1960
Don Knotts
Actor best known as Deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, winner of five Emmy Awards.
Class of 1948
Joe Manchin
U.S. Senator from West Virginia and former governor of the state.
Class of 1970
John Chambers
Former CEO and chairman of Cisco Systems, who led the company from 1995 to 2015; WVU's business school is named for him.
Class of 1971
Jayne Anne Phillips
Novelist who won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for "Night Watch."
Class of 1974
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
College town
Morgantown, WV
Best For
Traditions
"Take Me Home, Country Roads"
Played before every home football game and again after every win, with the crowd singing along — a tradition dating to 1972 that became legend when John Denver himself led the singing at Mountaineer Field's 1980 dedication game.
The Mountaineer mascot
A student dressed in buckskin and a coonskin cap who fires a black-powder musket after scores — adopted in 1890 and one of the oldest mascot traditions in college sports.
The Flying WV
The university's interlocking-WV logo, ubiquitous across campus and merchandise, and shorthand for the "Mountaineer Nation" identity that WVU fans carry well beyond Morgantown.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Morgantown
Pittsburgh
1.5 hoursThe nearest big city — pro sports, a real airport, and the internship market Morgantown doesn't have on its own.
Washington, D.C.
3.5 hoursA longer trip, but the standard option for museums, government internships and a genuine big-city weekend.
Deep Creek Lake, Maryland
1 hourBoating and lake weekends in summer, skiing at Wisp Resort in winter.
Blackwater Falls and Canaan Valley, WV
1.5 hoursWest Virginia's own mountain country — waterfalls, hiking and downhill skiing without leaving the state.
Ohiopyle State Park, PA
1 hourWhitewater rafting on the Youghiogheny River and access to Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright's house built over the falls.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT)
1.5 hours from campus
Flies international — you can start a trip abroad from here.
Pro sports nearby
- Pittsburgh Steelers NFL
- Pittsburgh Pirates MLB
- Pittsburgh Penguins NHL
Career Proximity
West Virginia's career reach runs on two anchors close to campus. The FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division sits about 45 minutes away in Clarksburg, and it's a working reason WVU built one of the country's few forensic and biometric identification programs — the FBI has named WVU its lead academic partner in biometrics research. The U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory sits a few miles from campus in Morgantown itself, feeding petroleum, natural gas and mining engineering programs tied to the Marcellus Shale region. For finance, tech and large hospital systems, Pittsburgh is 90 minutes away.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- WVU Medicine
- FBI Criminal Justice Information Services Division (Clarksburg)
- National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL)
- UPMC
Pittsburgh, PA — about 1.5 hours by road
Who Thrives Here
West Virginia is a land-grant flagship built for access rather than exclusivity: it admits the large majority of applicants, considers standardized tests but doesn't require them, and rates GPA as the one "Very Important" factor in the file — this is a school built to reward a solid transcript over an elaborate application. In state, it's a genuine bargain at $10,104 a year against $28,608 out of state, though the university meets only 62% of demonstrated need and its borrowers graduate owing $36,010 on average. Fifty-nine percent of undergraduates come from outside West Virginia, drawn in part by the culture: Mountaineer Field empties into a stadium-wide singalong of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" after every win, a tradition unbroken since 1972, and it anchors an identity ("Mountaineer Nation") that shapes the school as much as any classroom does. The trade-off shows up in outcomes: only 48.4% finish in four years and 63.9% in six, and Pell recipients graduate at just 52.2% within six years — nearly 12 points behind the overall rate, evidence that access here doesn't erase the gap in who makes it to the finish line.