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.
Grand Valley State University was awarded 137 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is other health professions and related clinical sciences.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
College Factual ranked GVSU as #342 out of 2,152 colleges and universities in the country on its 2025 Best Colleges list. This puts it in the top 20% of all schools in the nation. This is an improvement over the previous year, when GVSU held the #399 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
Out of the 56 colleges in Michigan, GVSU is ranked at #5.
With an acceptance rate of 90%, GVSU 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.
About 63% of students accepted to GVSU submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 480 and 610. Math scores were between 480 and 600.
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 Grand Valley State 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 Grand Valley State University is 66%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 79% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Grand Valley State University 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 GVSU for first-time, full-time students is 41%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Grand Valley State University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 20,405 undergraduates at GVSU with 18,013 being full-time and 2,392 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $8,344 | $9,395 | $12,987 | $17,964 | $21,496 |
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 GVSU, 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 GVSU, approximately 51% of students took out student loans averaging $6,572 a year. That adds up to $26,288 over four years for those students.
Get more details about paying for Grand Valley State University.
See which majors at Grand Valley State University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Grand Valley State University.
Contact details for GVSU are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 1 Campus Dr, Allendale, MI 49401-9403 |
| Phone: | 616-331-2020 |
| Website: | www.gvsu.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| General Biology | 352 | $40,959 |
| General Psychology | 334 | $30,100 |
| Marketing | 325 | $46,022 |
| General Education | 303 | $44,071 |
| Health & Physical Education | 275 | $29,913 |
| Finance & Financial Management | 260 | $52,872 |
| Other Health Professions | 247 | $34,203 |
| Nursing | 242 | $71,181 |
| Social Work | 237 | $37,233 |
| Accounting | 235 | $51,186 |
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 2022-2023, 9,863 students took at least one online class at Grand Valley State University. This is a decrease from the 10,213 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 9,863 | 1,190 |
| 2021-2022 | 10,213 | 1,187 |
| 2020-2021 | 21,395 | 3,726 |
| 2018-2019 | 2,406 | 291 |
Learn more about online learning at Grand Valley State University.
If you’re considering Grand Valley State University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against GVSU? 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.