by our College Data Analytics TeamCollege 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.
Pacific Lutheran University was awarded 3 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is education.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
PLU landed the #568 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 PLU held the #688 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
PLU also holds the #9 spot on the Best Colleges in Washington ranking.
Pacific Lutheran University has an acceptance rate of 89%, so it is easier to gain admission to this school than some others. Still, the admissions staff will examine your application closely to make sure you're a good fit for PLU.
About 4% of students accepted to PLU submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 640 and 718. Math scores were between 613 and 705.
The student to faculty ratio at PLU is an impressive 11 to 1. That's quite good when you compare it to the national average of 15 to 1. This is a good sign that students at the school will have more opportunities for one-on-one interactions with their professors.
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 Pacific Lutheran University is 65%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
Pacific Lutheran University has a freshmen retention rate of 78%. 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.
The on-time graduation rate for someone pursuing a bachelor's degree is typically four years. This rate at PLU for first-time, full-time students is 63%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Pacific Lutheran University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 2,544 undergraduates at PLU with 2,486 being full-time and 58 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $17,751 | $17,563 | $19,030 | $26,941 | $28,964 |
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 PLU, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
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 PLU, approximately 49% of students took out student loans averaging $7,547 a year. That adds up to $30,188 over four years for those students.
Get more details about paying for Pacific Lutheran University.
See which majors at Pacific Lutheran University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Pacific Lutheran University.
Contact details for PLU are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 12180 Park Ave South, Tacoma, WA 98447-0003 |
| Phone: | 253-535-7411 |
| Website: | www.plu.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Nursing | 145 | $81,761 |
| Business Administration & Management | 105 | $52,919 |
| Teacher Education Grade Specific | 69 | $57,624 |
| Health & Physical Education | 54 | $33,449 |
| General Biology | 38 | $36,766 |
| General Psychology | 31 | $30,757 |
| Writing Studies | 27 | NA |
| Computer Science | 26 | NA |
| Communication & Media Studies | 21 | $33,970 |
| History | 21 | NA |
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, 124 students took at least one online class at Pacific Lutheran University. This is a decrease from the 128 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 124 | 39 |
| 2021-2022 | 128 | 61 |
| 2020-2021 | 2,855 | 1,319 |
| 2018-2019 | 0 | 0 |
Learn more about online learning at Pacific Lutheran University.
If you’re considering Pacific Lutheran University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against PLU? 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.