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Lake Area Technical Institute Data & Information Overview

61 awards Ranking Badges
Great Price Value for Your Money
1% Student Loan Default Rate
This overview covers the essential stats on Lake Area Technical Institute, including its rankings, majors, diversity, and more.
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.

How Well Is Lake Area Technical Institute Ranked?

#274 Best Colleges in Nation
#1 Best Colleges in SD
Agriculture & Agriculture Operations Highest Ranked Major
Quality Badge

2025 Rankings

College 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.

Lake Area Technical Institute was awarded 61 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is agriculture & agriculture operations.

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Overall Quality

LATI is ranked #274 out of 2,152 schools in the nation for overall quality on College Factual's 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 LATI held the #297 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.

LATI also holds the #1 spot on the Best Colleges in South Dakota ranking.

See all of the rankings for Lake Area Technical Institute.

Is It Hard to Get Into LATI?

Open Admissions Policy

Acceptance Rate

Since Lake Area Technical Institute has an open admissions policy, being accepted to the school isn't that hard. However, a full basic things - such as a high school diploma or equivalent - may be required. Also, go over your application to make sure it is complete before you submit it.

Learn more about Lake Area Technical Institute admissions.

Lake Area Technical Institute Faculty

17 to 1 Student to Faculty
73% Full Time Teachers

Student to Faculty Ratio

With a student to faculty ratio of 17 to 1, Lake Area Technical Institute 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

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 Lake Area Technical Institute is 73%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.

Full-Time Faculty Percent  73 out of 100
0
100

Retention and Graduation Rates at Lake Area Technical Institute

81% Freshmen Retention

Freshmen Retention Rate

Lake Area Technical Institute has a freshmen retention rate of 81%. That's a good sign that full-time students like the school and their professors enough to want to stick around for another year. It's also a sign that the admissions team did a good job in choosing applicants who were a good fit for the school.

Freshmen Retention Rate  81 out of 100
0
100

Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Lake Area Technical Institute.

Lake Area Technical Institute Undergraduate Student Diversity

1,509 Full-Time Undergraduates
6.2% Racial-Ethnic Minorities*
41.8% Percent Women

During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 2,217 undergraduates at LATI with 1,509 being full-time and 708 being part-time.

How Much Does Lake Area Technical Institute Cost?

$14,454 Net Price
84% Take Out Loans
$24,124 Total Student Loans
The overall average net price of LATI is $14,454. 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 LATI

$0-30 K $30K-48K $48-75 $75-110K $110K +
$10,663 $11,275 $14,720 $16,423 $16,687

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 LATI, 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 LATI, approximately 84% of students took out student loans averaging $6,031 a year. That adds up to $24,124 over four years for those students.

The student loan default rate at LATI is 1.0%. 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 Lake Area Technical Institute.

How Much Money Do LATI Graduates Make?

$45,473 Avg Salary of Grads
High Earnings Boost
Yearly salaries vary depending on what you major in, but on average, bachelor's degree recipients from LATI make around $45,473 per year during the early years of their employment. This is good news for future LATI graduates since it is 8% more than the average college graduate's salary of $49,219 per year.

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See which majors at Lake Area Technical Institute make the most money.

Location of Lake Area Technical Institute

South Dakota State
1,509 Full-Time Undergraduates
Town Campus Setting
Lake Area Technical Institute is a public institution located in Watertown, South Dakota. Watertown is a good match for students who enjoy small-town life.

Get more details about the location of Lake Area Technical Institute.

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Contact details for LATI are given below.

Contact Details
Address: 1201 Arrow Avenue, Watertown, SD 57201-0730
Phone: 605-882-5284
Website: www.lakeareatech.edu/

Lake Area Technical Institute Majors

24 Majors With Completions
1,583 Undergraduate Degrees
1,580 Graduate Degrees
During the most recent year for which we have data, students from 24 majors graduated from Lake Area Technical Institute. Of these students, 1,583 received undergraduate degrees and 1,580 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
Vehicle Maintenance & Repair 130 NA
Agricultural Economics & Business 83 NA
Practical Nursing & Nursing Assistants 77 NA
Precision Metal Working 74 NA
Human Services 49 NA
Allied Health & Medical Assisting Services 41 NA
Marketing 37 NA
Computer Science 32 NA
Dental Support Services 29 NA
Cosmetology 29 NA

Learn more about the majors offered at Lake Area Technical Institute along with which ones have the highest average starting salaries.

Online Learning at LATI

51% Take At Least One Class Online
22% Take All Classes Online

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 2022-2023, 1,137 students took at least one online class at Lake Area Technical Institute. This is an increase from the 958 students who took online classes the previous year.

Year Took at Least One Online Class Took All Classes Online
2022-2023 1,137 499
2021-2022 958 526
2020-2021 978 456
2018-2019 718 291

Learn more about online learning at Lake Area Technical Institute.

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

More about our data sources and methodologies.

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