Here are the best colleges and universities in Delaware. Our list will help you find the right kind of school for you.
A total of six higher learning institutions offer associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. Two public schools and four private schools award degrees in fields such as mathematics, political science, criminal justice, and publishing. Delaware State University and the University of Delaware are both affordable at $8,000 and $14,000, respectively.
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The student population, however, is vastly different with a little over 4,000 attending Delaware State University and just over 22,000 students at the University of Delaware. Wilmington University has the highest student population among private colleges at just under 10,000 — it is also the most affordable at $11,000. Students who attend Delaware College of Art and Design can specialize their associate degree in animation, fine arts, graphic design, illustration, or photography. Residents who earn degrees in the medical or mental health fields have the opportunity to get assistance in paying off their student loans through Delaware’s State Loan Repayment Program (SLRP). Applicants must agree to work in underserved areas of Delaware for two or three years and can receive up to $105,000.
Though it is the second smallest state in the nation, Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, earning it the nickname, The First State. With the Delaware River running through it, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and forests throughout, Delaware college students will find beauty everywhere.
Just above the nation’s average for cost of colleges at $12,274, Delaware provides prospective students with unique options in both the private and public spheres. Discover more about Delaware’s colleges and universities.
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 4 colleges and universities in Delaware that meet our criteria. This list of the top 30 colleges in Delaware below focuses on schools that offer bachelor’s degrees. The ranking features fully accredited public and private colleges and universities in Delaware.
Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
66%
Graduation
82%
Student body
23K
Median SAT/ACT
1255/27
University of Delaware’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
39%
Graduation
48%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
920/19
Delaware State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Graduation
21%
Student body
11K
Wilmington University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$27K
Acceptance
61%
Graduation
17%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
940/15
Wesley 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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