by our College Data Analytics Team
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.
Columbia College Chicago was awarded 29 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is drama & theater arts.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
College Factual ranked Columbia as #212 out of 2,152 colleges and universities in the country on its 2025 Best Colleges list. This puts it in the top 10% of all schools in the nation. This is an improvement over the previous year, when Columbia held the #370 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
Columbia also holds the #9 spot on the Best Colleges in Illinois ranking.
With an acceptance rate of 95%, Columbia 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 Columbia College Chicago, this ratio is 15 to 1, which is on par with the national average of 15 to 1. That's not bad at all.
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 Columbia College Chicago is 30%. This is lower 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 Columbia College Chicago is 67%, which is about average when compared to the national rate of 68%.
The on-time graduation rate for someone pursuing a bachelor's degree is typically four years. This rate at Columbia for first-time, full-time students is 42%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Columbia College Chicago.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 6,542 undergraduates at Columbia with 6,117 being full-time and 425 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $22,898 | $23,354 | $26,813 | $29,966 | $31,503 |
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 Columbia, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
While almost two-thirds of students nationwide take out loans to pay for college, the percentage may be quite different for the school you plan on attending. At Columbia, approximately 61% of students took out student loans averaging $7,301 a year. That adds up to $29,204 over four years for those students.
See which majors at Columbia College Chicago make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Columbia College Chicago.
Contact details for Columbia are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 600 South Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605-1996 |
| Phone: | 312-369-1000 |
| Website: | www.colum.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Design & Applied Arts | 239 | $29,630 |
| Graphic Communications | 209 | $26,309 |
| Film, Video & Photographic Arts | 198 | $23,905 |
| Drama & Theater Arts | 145 | $17,929 |
| Arts & Media Management | 118 | $23,844 |
| Writing Studies | 62 | $25,060 |
| Music | 59 | $19,943 |
| Radio, Television & Digital Communication | 54 | $24,191 |
| Fine & Studio Arts | 50 | $22,765 |
| Audiovisual Communications | 44 | $20,927 |
Online courses area a great option for busy, working students as well as for those who have scheduling conflicts and want to study on their own time. As time goes by, expect to see more and more online learning options become available.
In 2022-2023, 2,823 students took at least one online class at Columbia College Chicago. This is an increase from the 1,297 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 2,823 | 69 |
| 2021-2022 | 1,297 | 14 |
| 2020-2021 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018-2019 | 14 | 14 |
Learn more about online learning at Columbia College Chicago.
If you’re considering Columbia College Chicago, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Columbia? 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.