by our College Data Analytics TeamCollege 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.
Northwestern College was awarded 17 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is secondary education.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
NWC is ranked #908 out of 2,152 schools in the nation for overall quality on College Factual's 2025 Best Colleges list.
NWC is also ranked #18 out of 37 schools in Iowa.
With an acceptance rate of 87%, NWC 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 Northwestern College, 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 Northwestern College is 100%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 78% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Northwestern College 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 NWC for first-time, full-time students is 64%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Northwestern College.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 1,069 undergraduates at NWC with 974 being full-time and 95 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $19,324 | $21,190 | $22,765 | $20,833 | $25,550 |
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 NWC, 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 NWC, approximately 65% of students took out student loans averaging $7,535 a year. That adds up to $30,140 over four years for those students.
See which majors at Northwestern College make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Northwestern College.
Contact details for NWC are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 101 Seventh St Sw, Orange City, IA 51041 |
| Phone: | 712-707-7000 |
| Website: | https://www.nwciowa.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Educational Administration | 96 | NA |
| Special Education | 87 | NA |
| Teacher Education Grade Specific | 82 | $42,441 |
| Teacher Education Subject Specific | 47 | NA |
| Health & Physical Education | 28 | NA |
| Business Administration & Management | 27 | $48,515 |
| Nursing | 26 | $71,479 |
| Accounting | 16 | NA |
| General Biology | 14 | NA |
| Linguistics & Comparative Literature | 9 | NA |
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, 639 students took at least one online class at Northwestern College. This is a decrease from the 647 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 639 | 528 |
| 2021-2022 | 647 | 467 |
| 2020-2021 | 688 | 470 |
| 2018-2019 | 510 | 338 |
If you’re considering Northwestern College, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against NWC? 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.