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 Northern Iowa was awarded 125 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is education.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
UNI landed the #270 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 puts it in the top 20% of all schools in the nation.
UNI also holds the #3 spot on the Best Colleges in Iowa ranking.
Because it has a high acceptance rate of 95%, some consider UNI to be a safety school. But don't just assume that admittance is in the bag. Make sure to spend enough time on your application so that it is in tip-top shape.
About 1% of students accepted to UNI submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 530 and 680. Math scores were between 490 and 650.
With a student to faculty ratio of 17 to 1, University of Northern Iowa 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 Northern Iowa is 78%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 83% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like University of Northern Iowa 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 UNI the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 41%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at University of Northern Iowa.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 8,289 undergraduates at UNI with 7,632 being full-time and 657 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10,137 | $11,583 | $14,349 | $16,504 | $16,079 |
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 UNI, 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 UNI, approximately 46% of students took out student loans averaging $6,606 a year. That adds up to $26,424 over four years for those students.
Get more details about paying for University of Northern Iowa.
See which majors at University of Northern Iowa make the most money.
Get more details about the location of University of Northern Iowa.
Contact details for UNI are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 1227 W 27Th St, Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0005 |
| Phone: | 319-273-2311 |
| Website: | https://www.uni.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Teacher Education Grade Specific | 389 | $42,790 |
| Business Administration & Management | 238 | $51,690 |
| Finance & Financial Management | 141 | $52,759 |
| Teacher Education Subject Specific | 136 | $43,602 |
| Social Work | 134 | $37,257 |
| Management Sciences & Quantitative Methods | 116 | NA |
| General Psychology | 111 | $32,673 |
| Communication Sciences | 101 | $10,746 |
| Health & Physical Education | 81 | $32,709 |
| General Biology | 76 | $36,286 |
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, 3,940 students took at least one online class at University of Northern Iowa. This is a decrease from the 4,979 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 3,940 | 955 |
| 2021-2022 | 4,979 | 767 |
| 2020-2021 | 7,858 | 909 |
| 2018-2019 | 2,754 | 636 |
Learn more about online learning at University of Northern Iowa.
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.