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.
University of Kentucky was awarded 122 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is social work.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
According to College Factual's 2025 analysis, UK is ranked #220 out of 2,152 schools in the nation that were analyzed for overall quality. This puts it in the top 20% of all schools in the nation. This is an improvement over the previous year, when UK held the #230 spot on the Best Overall Colleges list.
UK also holds the #1 spot on the Best Colleges in Kentucky ranking.
With an acceptance rate of 95%, University of Kentucky is easier to get into than many other schools. But that doesn't mean you can slack off on your application. Make sure to treat this school like any other when submitting requested materials and documents.
About 9% of students accepted to UK submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 540 and 650. Math scores were between 530 and 640.
With a student to faculty ratio of 17 to 1, University of Kentucky is about average in this regard as the nationwide rate is 15 to 1. While this does not translate directly to class size, it's a good indicator of how much time professors will have to spend with their students on a one-on-one basis.
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 University of Kentucky is 83%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 85% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like University of Kentucky 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.
The on-time graduation rate for someone pursuing a bachelor's degree is typically four years. This rate at UK for first-time, full-time students is 47%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at University of Kentucky.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 22,227 undergraduates at UK with 20,239 being full-time and 1,988 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10,597 | $11,156 | $13,939 | $19,294 | $22,835 |
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 UK, 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 UK, approximately 43% of students took out student loans averaging $8,420 a year. That adds up to $33,680 over four years for those students.
See which majors at University of Kentucky make the most money.
Get more details about the location of University of Kentucky.
Contact details for UK are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | South Limestone, Lexington, KY 40506-0032 |
| Phone: | 859-257-9000 |
| Website: | www.uky.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Social Work | 629 | $36,312 |
| General Business/Commerce | 484 | $49,431 |
| Marketing | 383 | $48,100 |
| Nursing | 366 | $71,461 |
| Finance & Financial Management | 298 | $58,422 |
| General Psychology | 290 | $28,551 |
| Teacher Education Subject Specific | 261 | $35,282 |
| Communication & Media Studies | 223 | $39,311 |
| General Biology | 211 | $31,360 |
| Accounting | 202 | $59,474 |
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, 13,611 students took at least one online class at University of Kentucky. This is an increase from the 11,846 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 13,611 | 4,064 |
| 2021-2022 | 11,846 | 3,447 |
| 2020-2021 | 25,082 | 4,976 |
| 2018-2019 | 7,038 | 1,622 |
If you’re considering University of Kentucky, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against UK? 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.