Liberal arts colleges are a great option for students seeking a well-rounded education in an intimate campus setting. The best liberal arts colleges in Colorado offer a diverse selection of degree programs with opportunities for a highly individualized educational experience.
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.
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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.
A liberal arts college is a school that puts a premium on undergraduate studies and offers a broad range of subjects for students to study. A college of liberal arts typically provides smaller class sizes, more direct engagement with professors, and, most importantly, the opportunity to sample a wide range of subject areas on the way to a bachelor’s degree. We’ve identified 15 liberal arts colleges in Colorado. To be ranked among the best liberal arts colleges in Colorado, schools must fully accredited institutions.
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
$5K
Student body
4K
Aspen 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
$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:
In pursuing a bachelor’s degree, you will need to choose between three kinds of schools: research universities, liberal arts colleges, and online colleges.
Research universities are colleges and universities whose faculty are active in research and publishing. These schools offer a wide array of doctoral programs, especially in the sciences. They tend to be big, with tens of thousands of students.
Do you prefer a larger university setting, such as largest public university in your state? Research universities are typically big, offering degrees in many different disciplines. Is a big high-powered research environment the thing for you. If not, you should think about a liberal arts college. In deciding on an undergraduate institution, ask yourself what sort of environment will best help you to be happy and excel.
Often referred to as “teaching colleges” liberal arts colleges put a premium on undergraduate studies and offers a broad range of subjects for students to study. A college of liberal arts typically provides smaller class sizes, more direct engagement with professors, and, most importantly, the opportunity to sample a wide range of subject areas on the way to a bachelor’s degree.
Online colleges are typically the same colleges and universities you could attend in-person, but for certain degree programs the college or unviersity has made the degree programs available to be completed online. For over 5 million students, online degree programs allow students to earn their degrees in the most flexible format available. Online degrees are as respected as the on-campus degress you could earn from the same schools. There’s usually no disctinction between the two degrees, and your degree and transcript will not say that the degree was earned online. Online degree programs are offered by a vast majority of colleges and universities, and the number of offering continues to grow. Whehter you are searching for an associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate, there’s a good chance you can earn your degree online from a respectable online college.
If you interested in an online bachelor’s degree, check out what the best online colleges offer, or search our online degrees for the exact program that interests you. In either case, you will find well respected colleges and universities that offer online degrees.
Back to TopMany 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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