Charleston Southern University Data & Information Overview

If you want to know more about Charleston Southern University, such as what majors does it offer, how diverse it is, how well it ranks, and more, this is your one-stop resource. Want to dig deeper into a particular stat? Just click on its tile and you'll be taked to a more in-depth page on the figure. In addition, you can use the links below to quickly jump to any section on this page.

• Rankings
• Admission and Acceptance
• Faculty
• Retention and Graduation Rates
• Diversity
• Cost
• Student Debt
• Average Earnings
• Location
• Majors
• Online Learning
• Related Schools

How Well Is Charleston Southern University Ranked?

2021 Rankings

In its yearly rankings, College Factual analyzes over 2,000 colleges and universities to determine which ones are the best in a variety of categories, such as overall value, quality, diversity, which schools are the best for each major, and much more.

Charleston Southern University was awarded 6 badges in the 2021 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is business, management and marketing.

Overall Quality

According to College Factual's 2021 analysis, CSU is ranked #1,177 out of 1,715 schools in the nation that were analyzed for overall quality.

CSU also holds the #17 spot on the Best Colleges in South Carolina ranking.

See all of the rankings for Charleston Southern University.

Is It Hard to Get Into CSU?

Acceptance Rate

The acceptance rate at Charleston Southern University is a competitive 56%, so make sure you take your application seriously when putting it together. Even leaving out a minor detail could be a reason to move you to the rejection pile.

Average Test Scores

About 64% of students accepted to CSU submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 510 and 560. Math scores were between 500 and 530.

CSU received ACT scores from 73% of accepted students. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, ACT Composite scores ranged between 20 and 22.

Learn more about Charleston Southern University admissions.

Charleston Southern University Faculty

Student to Faculty Ratio

With a student to faculty ratio of 15 to 1, Charleston Southern University is about average in this regard as the nationwide rate is 15 to 1. While this does not translate directly to class size, it's a good indicator of how much time professors will have to spend with their students on a one-on-one basis.

Percent of Full-Time Faculty

When estimating how much access students will have to their teachers, some people like to look at what percentage of faculty members are full time. This is because part-time teachers may not have as much time to spend on campus as their full-time counterparts.

The full-time faculty percentage at Charleston Southern University is 61%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.

Retention and Graduation Rates at Charleston Southern University

Freshmen Retention Rate

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 Charleston Southern University is 66%, which is about average when compared to the national rate of 68%.

Graduation Rate

When we say that a student has graduated on time, we mean that they have finished their bachelor's degree within four years. The on-time graduation rate at CSU is 26%. That's lower than the national rate of 33.3%

Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Charleston Southern University.

Good Overall Diversity at CSU

During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 2,945 undergraduates at CSU with 2,729 being full-time and 216 being part-time.

CSU Diversity Score

For each college and university, College Factual calculates an overall diversity score that takes four factors into account: gender, ethnicity, age, and home location of the student. Then, the schools with the best mixtures of students with respect to these factors are ranked the highest.

The overall diversity score for CSU is 67.38 out of 100, meaning that is is more diverse than most schools in the country.

Get more detailed information on diversity and student demographics at Charleston Southern University.

How Much Does Charleston Southern University Cost?

The overall average net price of CSU is $17,561. The affordability of the school largely depends on your financial need since net price varies by income group. See the table below for the net price for different income groups.

Net Price by Income Group for CSU

$0-30 K	$30K-48K	$48-75	$75-110K	$110K +
$15,406	$15,448	$17,056	$19,813	$21,651

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 CSU, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.

Student Loan Debt

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 CSU, approximately 72% of students took out student loans averaging $5,974 a year. That adds up to $23,896 over four years for those students.

The student loan default rate at CSU is 7.6%. Although this is lower than the national default rate of 10.1%, you'll still want to keep this in mind when taking out student loans.

Get more details about paying for Charleston Southern University.

How Much Money Do CSU Graduates Make?

Yearly salaries vary depending on what you major in, but on average, bachelor's degree recipients from CSU make around $36,900 per year during the early years of their employment. Unfortunately, this is 7% less that the average college graduate's salary of $39,802 per year. However, graduates in your major field may make more.

See which majors at Charleston Southern University make the most money.

Location of Charleston Southern University

Charleston Southern University is a private not-for-profit institution situated in Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston is a great location for students who prefer city over country life.

Get more details about the location of Charleston Southern University.

Contact details for CSU are given below.

	Contact Details
Address:	9200 University Blvd, Charleston, SC 29406-9121
Phone:	843-863-7000
Website:	https://www.charlestonsouthern.edu
Facebook:	https://www.facebook.com/charlestonsouthernuniversity
Twitter:	https://twitter.com/csuniv

Charleston Southern University Majors

During the most recent year for which we have data, students from 49 majors graduated from Charleston Southern University. Of these students, 661 received undergraduate degrees and 139 graduated with a master's or doctor's degree. The following table lists the most popular undergraduate majors along with the average salary graduates from those majors make.

Most Popular Majors	Bachelor’s Degrees	Average Salary of Graduates
Nursing	76	$55,800
Business Administration & Management	52	$43,300
Teacher Education Grade Specific	49	$31,300
Health & Physical Education	44	$22,900
General Biology	38	$24,700
Communication & Media Studies	38	$23,800
General Psychology	37	NA
Criminal Justice & Corrections	33	$36,100
Teacher Education Subject Specific	27	NA
Design & Applied Arts	22	$29,000

Learn more about the majors offered at Charleston Southern University along with which ones have the highest average starting salaries.

Online Learning at CSU

Online learning is becoming popular at even the oldest colleges and universities in the United States. Not only are online classes great for returning adults with busy schedules, they are also frequented by a growing number of traditional students.

In 2017-2018, 1,326 students took at least one online class at Charleston Southern University. This is a decrease from the 1,453 students who took online classes the previous year.

Year	Took at Least One Online Class	Took All Classes Online
2017-2018	1,326	449
2016-2017	1,453	520
2015-2016	1,022	462
2014-2015	1,120	604
2013-2014	662	336

Learn more about online learning at Charleston Southern University.

Related Schools

If you’re considering Charleston Southern University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.

• Albright College
• Campbellsville University
• Gardner - Webb University
• McKendree University
• University of Mobile

Curious on how these schools stack up against CSU? 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!

Notes and References

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

• National Center for Education Statistics
• College Scorecard
• Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System
• Image Credit: By CharlestonSouthern under License

More about our data sources and methodologies.