Here are the best colleges and universities in Colorado, categorized into two lists – research universities and liberal arts colleges – to help you find the right kind of school for you.
Fans of the outdoors will feel right at home in Colorado. With the Rocky Mountains, Colorado River, and even part of the Great Plains, you’re sure to find adventure in The Centennial State. Students looking to balance outdoor adventure with higher education can choose from over 40 colleges and universities offering associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees for an average in-state tuition of $10,800.
Find college admissions consultants in your state.
Colorado’s 28 public institutes include junior colleges, universities, the United States Air Force Academy, and the Colorado School of Mines, a research university that specializes in science, technology, engineering, and math. Tuition for Colorado’s public schools ranges from $3,000 to $19,000, with many of the colleges and junior colleges starting at $4,000 and the universities at $8,000. With smaller class sizes and student populations, Colorado’s private institutions, which includes five religiously affiliated campuses, tend to be more expensive, ranging from $4,000 to $55,000 in tuition. The University of Colorado, Boulder, a notable research institute, is ranked as the number one school in the state and has a student population of just over 32,000. Students can earn degrees in computer science and physics and, once graduated, can share alumni status with influential people, such as Steve Wozniak and Robert Redford. Prospective art students can check out Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, and those desiring a career in the medical field can look into the Institute of Business and Medical Careers.
To learn more, check out the best degree programs and top career opportunities offered in Colorado.
Related: Differences between research universities and teaching colleges
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.
We’ve identified 24 colleges and universities in Colorado that meet our criteria. This list of the top 30 colleges in Colorado below focuses on schools that offer bachelor’s degrees. The ranking features fully accredited public and private colleges and universities in Colorado.
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
84%
Graduation
72%
Student body
34K
Median SAT/ACT
1250/28
University of Colorado Boulder’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$55K
Acceptance
61%
Graduation
75%
Student body
11K
Median SAT/ACT
1260/28
University of Denver’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
84%
Graduation
70%
Student body
29K
Median SAT/ACT
1180/26
Colorado State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Acceptance
13%
Graduation
87%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
1335/30
United States Air Force Academy’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$62K
Acceptance
14%
Graduation
88%
Student body
2K
Colorado College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$19K
Acceptance
55%
Graduation
84%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1310/30
Colorado School of Mines’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
66%
Graduation
44%
Student body
16K
Median SAT/ACT
1110/23
University of Colorado Denver’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Acceptance
88%
Graduation
52%
Student body
10K
Median SAT/ACT
1085/22
University of Northern Colorado’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Student body
4K
Aspen University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$40K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
67%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
1135/24
Regis University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$35K
Acceptance
100%
Graduation
31%
Student body
<1K
Naropa University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
83%
Graduation
32%
Student body
15K
Median SAT/ACT
1000/20
Metropolitan State University of Denver’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
90%
Graduation
45%
Student body
11K
Median SAT/ACT
1125/23
University of Colorado Colorado Springs’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$13K
Graduation
23%
Student body
28K
Colorado Technical University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
75%
Graduation
37%
Student body
8K
Median SAT/ACT
1050/21
Colorado Mesa University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
92%
Graduation
42%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1090/20
Fort Lewis College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
18%
Student body
5K
Community College of Denver’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
88%
Graduation
50%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1100/23
Western Colorado University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Acceptance
100%
Graduation
32%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
990/19
Adams State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$18K
Graduation
61%
Student body
9K
Colorado Christian University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
25%
Student body
3K
Colorado Mountain College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
94%
Graduation
37%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1035/21
Colorado State University Pueblo’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
24%
Student body
5K
Red Rocks Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
21%
Student body
4K
Pueblo Community College’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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