Public colleges and universities account for almost 75 percent of all undergraduate students in the U.S. The best public colleges in Colorado provide broad access to reputable degree programs, affordable tuition, and sprawling educational communities.
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.
Public and private colleges and universities operate under different business models. Public colleges and universities are owned by the state and receive both state and federal funding to operate. Private colleges and universities are private companies with private funding. If you’re looking at the pros and cons of private vs. public colleges, consider that many public colleges provide diverse course offerings, influential professors, and an excellent return on your investment.
Public colleges are schools that receive most of their funding from tax revenues. As a result, the cost of a bachelor’s degree at a public university is often lower than the equivalent cost at a private college — especially for students attending a public school in their home state. Attending a college in-state is usually the cheapest option. Private universities and colleges can be very competitive with their funding opportunities, so do not simply believe that private colleges are always going to be more expensive. According to National Center for Educational Statistics, the average annual cost (tuition, fees, room and board for full-time students) at a public university was slightly over $20,000. In contrast, private universities cost, on average, nearly $43,000 annually. But in the end, the cost of college comes down to each student’s academic and financial situation.
This list is composed entirely of public colleges and universities that offer bachelor’s degrees. We’ve identified 17 public universities in Colorado. To be included in our list of the best public colleges in Colorado, shcools must receive direct funding from the state, be fully accredited, and offer a broad range of bachelor’s degress.
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
$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
$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
$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
$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
$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
$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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