by our College Data Analytics Team
College Factual recognizes the best colleges and universities in its annual rankings. These rankings include categories for best overall colleges, best colleges for each major, best value schools, and much more.
Central Washington University was awarded 423 badges in the 2024 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is teacher education grade specific.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
CWU landed the #266 spot in College Factual's 2024 ranking of best overall colleges in the United States. The higher ed experts analyzed 2,238 colleges and universities across the nation to determine this ranking. This puts it in the top 15% of all schools in the nation. This is an improvement over the previous year, when CWU held the #282 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
CWU is also ranked #6 out of 51 schools in Washington.
With an acceptance rate of 88%, CWU has a fairly liberal admissions policy. However, don't just assume you'll get in! Put together a good application and make sure you include all requested documents and materials.
The student to faculty ratio is often used to estimate how much interaction there is between professors and their students at a college or university. At Central Washington University, this ratio is 15 to 1, which is on par with the national average of 15 to 1. That's not bad at all.
In addition to the student to faculty ratio, some people look at what percentage of faculty members are full-time as a sign of how much time professors will be able to spend with their students. This is because part-time teachers may not be be on campus as much as their full-time counterparts.
The full-time faculty percentage at Central Washington University is 62%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate tells us what percentage of first-year, full-time students choose to continue on to their sophomore year at a particular school. The rate at Central Washington University is 69%, which is about average when compared to the national rate of 68%.
The on-time graduation rate is the percent of first-time, full-time students who get their bachelor's degree with four years. At CWU this rate is 35%, which is about average when compared to the national rate of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Central Washington University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 10,518 undergraduates at CWU with 9,235 being full-time and 1,283 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10,796 | $12,706 | $17,235 | $21,566 | $22,466 |
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 CWU, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
Almost 66% of college students who graduated with the class of 2018 took out student loans, but that percentage varies from school to school. At CWU, approximately 42% of students took out student loans averaging $5,469 a year. That adds up to $21,876 over four years for those students.
The student loan default rate at CWU is 5.2%. This is significantly lower than the national default rate of 10.1%, which is a good sign that you'll be able to pay back your student loans.
Get more details about paying for Central Washington University.
See which majors at Central Washington University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Central Washington University.
Contact details for CWU are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 400 East University Way, Ellensburg, WA 98926 |
| Phone: | 509-963-1111 |
| Website: | www.cwu.edu/ |
| Facebook: | http://www.facebook.com/cwu.wildcats |
| Twitter: | http://twitter.com/CentralWashU |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Teacher Education Grade Specific | 419 | $47,716 |
| Business Administration & Management | 315 | $44,355 |
| General Psychology | 201 | $30,225 |
| Criminal Justice & Corrections | 177 | $39,307 |
| Teacher Education Subject Specific | 157 | $44,714 |
| Accounting | 139 | $47,780 |
| General Social Sciences | 94 | $36,440 |
| Information Technology | 90 | NA |
| Health & Physical Education | 80 | $26,585 |
| Finance & Financial Management | 68 | NA |
Online learning options are becoming more and more popular at American colleges and universities. Online classes are great for students who have busy schedules or for those who just want to study on their own time.
In 2020-2021, 7,332 students took at least one online class at Central Washington University. This is a decrease from the 10,833 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-2021 | 7,332 | 2,921 |
| 2019-2020 | 10,833 | 7,145 |
| 2018-2019 | 10,718 | 2,971 |
| 2017-2018 | 10,706 | 3,033 |
| 2016-2017 | 4,770 | 1,855 |
Learn more about online learning at Central Washington University.
If you’re considering Central Washington University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against CWU? 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.
