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.
Southern Methodist University was awarded 136 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is liberal arts general studies.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
College Factual ranked SMU as #142 out of 2,152 colleges and universities in the country on its 2025 Best Colleges list. This puts it in the top 10% of all schools in the nation.
Out of the 115 colleges in Texas, SMU is ranked at #5.
The acceptance rate at Southern Methodist University is a competitive 52%, so make sure you take your application seriously when putting it together. Even leaving out a minor detail could be a reason to move you to the rejection pile.
About 17% of students accepted to SMU submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 680 and 740. Math scores were between 690 and 770.
At SMU, the student to faculty ratio is an excellent 11 to 1. That's much better than the national average of 15 to 1. This indicates that many classes will probably be small, and students will have ample opportunites to work closely with their professors and classmates.
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 Southern Methodist University is 67%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 90% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Southern Methodist University 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 SMU the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 73%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Southern Methodist University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 6,827 undergraduates at SMU with 6,616 being full-time and 211 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $28,267 | $24,799 | $29,289 | $37,937 | $51,912 |
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 SMU, 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 SMU, approximately 26% of students took out student loans averaging $12,369 a year. That adds up to $49,476 over four years for those students.
Get more details about paying for Southern Methodist University.
See which majors at Southern Methodist University make the most money.
Get more details about the location of Southern Methodist University.
Contact details for SMU are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 6425 Boaz St, Dallas, TX 75275-0221 |
| Phone: | 214-768-2000 |
| Website: | https://www.smu.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Management Sciences & Quantitative Methods | 506 | NA |
| Finance & Financial Management | 290 | $83,159 |
| Law | 268 | NA |
| Economics | 179 | $71,630 |
| Accounting | 161 | $68,643 |
| Public Relations & Advertising | 137 | $51,828 |
| Health & Physical Education | 133 | $45,519 |
| Other Education | 130 | NA |
| Computer Science | 114 | $93,679 |
| Business Administration & Management | 112 | $60,659 |
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, 1,598 students took at least one online class at Southern Methodist University. This is a decrease from the 1,615 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 1,598 | 892 |
| 2021-2022 | 1,615 | 912 |
| 2020-2021 | 3,839 | 3,213 |
| 2018-2019 | 1,104 | 501 |
Learn more about online learning at Southern Methodist University.
If you’re considering Southern Methodist University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against SMU? 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.