For prospective college students looking for schools that align with their Christian faith and demonstrate academic excellence, here are the best Christian colleges and universities in Arkansas.
Colleges and universities in Arkansas are uniquely affordable, with just under half providing tuition rates of $9,000 or less. We’ve also found 7 high quality olleges offering online degree programs in Arkansas. Included in this list are the state’s two largest universities, the University of Arkansas and Arkansas State University. Though students can find some overlapping degree programs at the two schools, each has its specialties. For example, students hoping to pursue degrees in architecture, agriculture, or business may want to consider the University of Arkansas, while those interested in biology, nursing, or political science may want to attend Arkansas State University.
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Additionally, about one third of the schools in Arkansas have a religious affiliation. Student populations at these schools range from just under 200 students up to 5,000, and allow students to pursue degrees merging religious studies with fields like chemistry and history. While tuition at each of the state’s 12 private schools varies greatly, costing anywhere between $9,000 and $46,000, many of these colleges boast high graduation rates and small class sizes.
While Arkansas is perhaps best-known and loved for countless lakes, Hot Springs National Park, and the United States’ only active diamond mine. The Natural State houses many higher education institutes where students can earn associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in a full range of disciplines.
With so many affordable schools and competitive degree programs, students attending school in Arkansas have the luxury of combining their individual budget needs with their desired degree paths. For more information on attending school in Arkansas, check out some of the state’s top schools.
The following list of the best Christian schools consists entirely of colleges and universities that offer four-year undergraduate degrees. We’ve identified 10 Christian colleges in Arkansas. In order to be included in this ranking list of best Christian colleges and universities, a school must self-identify as Christian, be fully accredited, and offer a broad range of bachelor degree programs.
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great! If you are serious about finding the best colleges and universities for a bachelor’s degree, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching and whether their graduates are themselves advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence in their fields of study.
Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Concentrated Influence provides a ranking that is freer from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
To rank the influence of schools, we first determine the influence of scholars and professionals based on the number of citations and publications they have had over the past 10 years. In addition to publications and citations, we consider the web links to and from these sources, and the page views of those sources. We then match the influential people to their alma maters and institutions of employment, so that their influence is attributed to those schools. Our machine-learning Influence Ranking algorithm produces a numerical score of academic achievements, merits, and citations across Wikipedia, wikidata, Crossref, Semantic Scholar and an ever-growing body of data. If you are interested in exploring how and why we rank by influence, explore our methodology in more depth.
Tuition + fees
$33K
Acceptance
71%
Graduation
65%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1255/29
Hendrix College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$22K
Acceptance
55%
Graduation
72%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
1165/25
Harding University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$30K
Acceptance
62%
Graduation
60%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1155/24
Ouachita Baptist University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$13K
Graduation
34%
Student body
1K
Philander Smith College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$30K
Acceptance
50%
Graduation
43%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1120/23
Lyon College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$15K
Graduation
39%
Student body
<1K
Crowley's Ridge College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$25K
Acceptance
56%
Graduation
47%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
960/20
University of the Ozarks’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Graduation
12%
Student body
<1K
Arkansas Baptist College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$17K
Acceptance
50%
Graduation
38%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
960/19
Central Baptist College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$19K
Acceptance
69%
Graduation
38%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
970/20
Williams Baptist University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Many of our 2022 undergraduate focused rankings look considerably different than 2021. That’s because we took a fundamentally different apporach. For 2021 we utiulized our Concentrated Influence algorithm, designed to take away the size advantage larger schools have when we rank their faculty and alumni’s academic influence. Concentrated influence highlights smaller schools that are proportionally as successful as larger universities at cultivating influential alumni and faculty.
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