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.
Northern Illinois University was awarded 128 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is educational administration.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
NIU landed the #529 spot in College Factual's 2025 ranking of best overall colleges in the United States. The higher ed experts analyzed 2,152 colleges and universities across the nation to determine this ranking. This is an improvement over the previous year, when NIU held the #550 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
NIU also holds the #20 spot on the Best Colleges in Illinois ranking.
Northern Illinois University has an acceptance rate of 71%, which makes it somewhat selective. Make sure it's not the only school you apply to, even if it's your school of choice. Whether you get in or not will largely depend on how you compare to other applicants.
With a student to faculty ratio of 14 to 1, Northern Illinois 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.
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 Northern Illinois University is 70%. 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 Northern Illinois University is 65%, which is about average when compared to the national rate of 68%.
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 NIU is 27%. That's lower than the national rate of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Northern Illinois University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 12,277 undergraduates at NIU with 10,472 being full-time and 1,805 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10,974 | $11,006 | $13,204 | $17,435 | $21,060 |
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 NIU, 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 NIU, approximately 59% of students took out student loans averaging $6,377 a year. That adds up to $25,508 over four years for those students.
Get more details about paying for Northern Illinois University.
See which majors at Northern Illinois University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Northern Illinois University.
Contact details for NIU are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 1425 W. Lincoln Hwy., Dekalb, IL 60115-2828 |
| Phone: | 800-892-3050 |
| Website: | www.niu.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Business Administration & Management | 348 | $52,724 |
| Management Sciences & Quantitative Methods | 223 | $51,128 |
| General Psychology | 221 | $33,150 |
| Nursing | 205 | $75,557 |
| Computer Science | 169 | $77,257 |
| Marketing | 160 | $51,137 |
| Mechanical Engineering | 153 | $68,069 |
| Health/Medical Prep Programs | 153 | $31,899 |
| Teacher Education Grade Specific | 135 | $44,214 |
| Accounting | 134 | $63,743 |
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, 10,521 students took at least one online class at Northern Illinois University. This is a decrease from the 11,295 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 10,521 | 2,208 |
| 2021-2022 | 11,295 | 2,583 |
| 2020-2021 | 2,489 | 1,499 |
| 2018-2019 | 2,027 | 649 |
Learn more about online learning at Northern Illinois University.
If you’re considering Northern Illinois University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against NIU? 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.