What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$9,450 to $20,273 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: $26,415 a year in-state. Average need-based aid package: $16,730.Aid and debt
49.8%
receive need-based grants
$36,010
average debt at graduation
5,215
students got merit aid
about 29% of undergraduates
$9,041
average merit award
Getting In
Key dates
Test scores
SAT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 1010–1210 · 56% of the class submitted
ACT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 20–26 · 23% of the class submitted
What they value
- Very important
- GPA
- Considered
- SAT/ACT scores
- Not considered
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- Class rank
- Personal essay
- Recommendations
- Extracurriculars
- Special talent
- Character
- First-gen status
- Legacy status
- Where you're from
- In-state residency
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
West Virginia doesn't consider demonstrated interest in admissions at all — visits and follow-up emails won't move the needle here.
Source: Common Data Set 2024–25, Section C7 (admissions factors)
West Virginia just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-West Virginia essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
Class sizes aren't reported by this school.
19:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
58.2%
first-years from out of state
Who attends
- White81.3%
- Multiracial5.7%
- Hispanic4.7%
- Black3%
- Asian1.7%
- Unknown / other1.7%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. West Virginia CDS 2024–25, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
48.4% of West Virginia students graduate in 4 years.
48.4%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2018
63.9%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2018
83.4%
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
52.2% finish in 6 years, against 63.9% of all students.
An 11.7-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 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.
MoreLess
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.
The City
College town
Morgantown, WV
Best For
Notable alumni
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.
Traditions
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 from 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 and game days
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
Internships and jobs nearby
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
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 63% 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.