by our College Data Analytics Team
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.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was awarded 76 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is engineering technologies.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
According to College Factual's 2025 analysis, RPI is ranked #64 out of 2,152 schools in the nation that were analyzed for overall quality. This lands it a coveted spot in the top 5% of all colleges and universities in the country. This is an improvement over the previous year, when RPI held the #106 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
RPI also holds the #6 spot on the Best Colleges in New York ranking.
See all of the rankings for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
If you're applying to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute you'll face some tough competition, since the school's acceptance rate is only 65%. Definitely don't wait until the last minute to submit your application, since applying early may be in your favor.
About 52% of students accepted to RPI submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 660 and 740. Math scores were between 700 and 780.
Learn more about Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute admissions.
The student to faculty ratio is often used to measure the number of teaching resources that a college or university offers its students. The national average for this metric is 15 to 1, but at RPI it is much better at 12 to 1. That's good news for students who want to interact more on a personal level with their teachers.
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 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is 86%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 89% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 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.
Students are considered to have graduated on time if they finish their studies within four years. At RPI the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 74%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 6,283 undergraduates at RPI with 6,262 being full-time and 21 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $21,439 | $19,848 | $27,920 | $31,807 | $42,335 |
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 RPI, 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 RPI, approximately 57% of students took out student loans averaging $10,092 a year. That adds up to $40,368 over four years for those students.
The student loan default rate at RPI 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 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
See which majors at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Contact details for RPI are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 110 8Th St, Troy, NY 12180-3590 |
| Phone: | 518-276-6000 |
| Website: | www.rpi.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Computer Science | 322 | $104,943 |
| Mechanical Engineering | 264 | $73,833 |
| Aerospace & Aeronautical Engineering | 146 | $73,213 |
| Electrical Engineering | 134 | $83,412 |
| Biomedical Engineering | 98 | $74,427 |
| Computer Engineering Technology | 91 | $94,722 |
| Mathematics | 90 | $80,196 |
| Chemical Engineering | 86 | $78,263 |
| Business Administration & Management | 84 | $47,925 |
| Civil Engineering | 82 | $71,790 |
If you’re considering Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against RPI? 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.