by our College Data Analytics TeamCollege Factual analyzes over 2,000 colleges and universities in its annual rankings and ranks them in a variety of ways, including most diverse, best overall quality, best for non-traditional students, and much more.
Central College was awarded 4 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is general business administration and management.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Central is ranked #1,023 out of 2,152 schools in the nation for overall quality on College Factual's 2025 Best Colleges list.
Central also holds the #21 spot on the Best Colleges in Iowa ranking.
When it comes to admittance, Central College is somewhat selective. Its acceptance rate is 79%, which means you'll face some strong competition during the admissions process. Do what you can to make your application stand out.
About 10% of students accepted to Central submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 520 and 608. Math scores were between 520 and 610.
The student to faculty ratio at Central College is about average at 13 to 1. This ratio is often used to gauge how many students might be in an average class and how much time professors will have to spend with their students on an individual level. The national average for this metric is 15 to 1.
Another measure that is often used to estimate how much access students will have to their professors is how many faculty members are full-time. The idea here is that part-time faculty tend to spend less time on campus, so they may not be as available to students as full-timers.
The full-time faculty percentage at Central College is 92%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 74% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Central College enough to come back for another year. This is a fair bit higher than the national average of 68%. That's certainly something to check off in the good column about the school.
The on-time graduation rate for someone pursuing a bachelor's degree is typically four years. This rate at Central for first-time, full-time students is 63%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Central College.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 1,120 undergraduates at Central with 1,079 being full-time and 41 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $13,988 | $16,740 | $20,292 | $22,506 | $25,885 |
The net price is calculated by adding tuition, room, board and other costs and subtracting financial aid.Note that the net price is typically less than the published for a school. For more information on the sticker price of Central, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
It's not uncommon for college students to take out loans to pay for school. In fact, almost 66% of students nationwide depend at least partially on loans. At Central, approximately 70% of students took out student loans averaging $8,126 a year. That adds up to $32,504 over four years for those students.
Get more details about the location of Central College.
Contact details for Central are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 812 University, Pella, IA 50219 |
| Phone: | 877-462-3687 |
| Website: | www.central.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Physiology & Pathology Sciences | 39 | NA |
| Business Administration & Management | 31 | $55,760 |
| General Biology | 19 | $26,933 |
| Teacher Education Grade Specific | 19 | $44,000 |
| Sociology | 17 | $38,034 |
| General Psychology | 16 | $29,923 |
| Accounting | 13 | $58,850 |
| General Engineering | 12 | NA |
| Biochemistry, Biophysics & Molecular Biology | 8 | NA |
| Communication & Media Studies | 8 | NA |
If you’re considering Central College, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Central? Pit them head to head with College Combat, our free interactive tool that lets you compare college on the features that matter most to you!
Footnotes
*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.
References
More about our data sources and methodologies.