by our College Data Analytics TeamIn 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.
Sam Houston State University was awarded 112 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is criminal justice studies.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
SHSU landed the #480 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 SHSU held the #565 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
SHSU also holds the #18 spot on the Best Colleges in Texas ranking.
The acceptance rate at Sam Houston State University is 85%. That's higher than the rate at many schools, but still low enough to be considered somewhat selective. If you want to get in, you'll need good grades and to be able to show that SHSU is a good fit for you.
About 51% of students accepted to SHSU submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 490 and 580. Math scores were between 470 and 560.
The student to faculty ratio is often used as a measure to gauge how much access students will have to their professors - the lower the number, the better. At Sam Houston State University, this rate is 20 to 1, which is high when compared to the national average of 15 to 1.
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 Sam Houston State University is 79%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
Sam Houston State University has a freshmen retention rate of 74%. 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 is the percent of first-time, full-time students who get their bachelor's degree with four years. At SHSU this rate is 34%, which is about average when compared to the national rate of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Sam Houston State University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 18,811 undergraduates at SHSU with 15,020 being full-time and 3,791 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10,354 | $11,586 | $15,540 | $20,752 | $22,678 |
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 SHSU, 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 SHSU, approximately 52% of students took out student loans averaging $5,658 a year. That adds up to $22,632 over four years for those students.
Get more details about paying for Sam Houston State University.
See which majors at Sam Houston State University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Sam Houston State University.
Contact details for SHSU are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 1806 Ave J, Huntsville, TX 77340 |
| Phone: | 936-294-1111 |
| Website: | www.shsu.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Criminal Justice & Corrections | 983 | $37,792 |
| Teacher Education Grade Specific | 296 | NA |
| General Business/Commerce | 263 | $44,700 |
| General Psychology | 244 | $31,353 |
| Communication & Media Studies | 193 | $28,247 |
| Nursing | 154 | $82,463 |
| Health & Physical Education | 151 | $37,005 |
| Public Administration | 151 | NA |
| General Biology | 136 | $32,915 |
| Romance Languages | 129 | $40,562 |
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, 14,358 students took at least one online class at Sam Houston State University. This is an increase from the 14,047 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 14,358 | 5,098 |
| 2021-2022 | 14,047 | 5,252 |
| 2020-2021 | 13,065 | 4,425 |
| 2018-2019 | 11,265 | 3,489 |
Learn more about online learning at Sam Houston State University.
If you’re considering Sam Houston State University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against SHSU? 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.