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.
Salem University was awarded 4 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is general business administration and management.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Salem is ranked #1,865 out of 2,152 schools in the nation for overall quality on College Factual's 2025 Best Colleges list. This is an improvement over the previous year, when Salem held the #2,090 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
Salem is also ranked #15 out of 25 schools in West Virginia.
Salem University has an open admissions policy, so you should not have much trouble being accepted by the school. Still, it is important to fill out the application completely and submit any requested materials, which may include proof that you have a high school diploma or the equivalent.
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 Salem University, this ratio is 14 to 1, which is on par with the national average of 15 to 1. That's not bad at all.
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 Salem University is 24%. This is lower than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate is a sign of how many full-time students like a college or university well enough to come back for their sophomore year. At Salem University this rate is 57%, which is a bit lower than the national average of 68%.
The on-time graduation rate is the percent of first-time, full time students who obtain their bachelor's degree in four years or less. This rate is 23% for first-time, full-time students at Salem, which is lower than the national rate of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Salem University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 809 undergraduates at Salem with 709 being full-time and 100 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $13,772 | $13,835 | $14,079 | $15,283 | $16,192 |
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 Salem, 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 Salem, approximately 92% of students took out student loans averaging $7,194 a year. That adds up to $28,776 over four years for those students.
Get more details about the location of Salem University.
Contact details for Salem are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 223 W Main St, Salem, WV 26426 |
| Phone: | 304-326-1109 |
| Website: | https://www.salemu.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Business Administration & Management | 169 | $45,834 |
| Educational Administration | 45 | NA |
| Criminal Justice & Corrections | 39 | $25,665 |
| Nursing | 22 | NA |
| Security Science and Technology | 21 | NA |
| Curriculum & Instruction | 19 | NA |
| Computer Information Systems | 17 | NA |
| General Biology | 13 | NA |
| Teacher Education Grade Specific | 4 | NA |
| Teaching English or French | 0 | 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, 984 students took at least one online class at Salem University. This is a decrease from the 991 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 984 | 559 |
| 2021-2022 | 991 | 597 |
| 2020-2021 | 1,008 | 646 |
| 2018-2019 | 990 | 408 |
If you’re considering Salem University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Salem? 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.