Here are the best colleges and universities in Georgia. Our list will help you find the right kind of school for you.
Georgia has 70 colleges and universities, 38 of which are public institutions, and 36 of Georgia’s top colleges offer online degree programs. The University of Georgia, located in the city of Athens, is the largest, with over 35,000 students. Those attending Georgia State University and Georgia Southern University will enter into a friendly athletics rivalry. Tuition at Georgia State costs $9,000, and at Georgia Southern, $6,000. Of the 20 religiously affiliated schools, Emory University has both the highest tuition, just over $50,000, and student population, with over 13,000 in attendance. Whether you’re looking to earn your associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree, Georgia schools offer plenty of options.
Find college admissions consultants in your state.
Students can earn degrees in religious studies, business, social work, law, and computer science. Those looking to attend technical colleges can also choose from a handful of schools that offer two-year degrees in medicine, nursing, and education. Part of the University System of Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan State college is the state’s most affordable college at $3,000, and its students can major in fields like mathematics, criminal justice, and philosophy.
The Blue Ridge Mountains, oak and hickory forests, and the Atlantic Coastal Plain all make their home in Georgia, but the state’s most notable landform is the Okefenokee Swamp, the largest such water-mass in North America. This diverse landscape in The Peach State provides Georgia’s college and graduate students with a beautiful backdrop for an education.
Georgia also offers a loan repayment program for qualifying graduates in the medical field through the Georgia Board of Health Care Workforce. Check out the best degree programs and top career paths this southern state has to offer.
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 46 colleges and universities in Georgia that meet our criteria. This list of the top 30 colleges in Georgia below focuses on schools that offer bachelor’s degrees. The ranking features fully accredited public and private colleges and universities in Georgia.
Tuition + fees
$13K
Acceptance
21%
Graduation
91%
Student body
31K
Median SAT/ACT
1405/31
Georgia Tech’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$55K
Acceptance
19%
Graduation
90%
Student body
13K
Median SAT/ACT
1445/32
Emory University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
48%
Graduation
87%
Student body
38K
Median SAT/ACT
1330/29
University of Georgia’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
82%
Graduation
53%
Student body
35K
Median SAT/ACT
1155/23
Georgia State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$29K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
56%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1081/20
Morehouse College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$28K
Acceptance
53%
Graduation
75%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1155/24
Spelman College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$39K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
73%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1255/27
Mercer University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
91%
Graduation
54%
Student body
24K
Median SAT/ACT
1125/22
Georgia Southern University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$24K
Acceptance
59%
Graduation
42%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1010/18
Clark Atlanta University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
40%
Student body
10K
Median SAT/ACT
1065/21
Valdosta State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$44K
Acceptance
68%
Graduation
72%
Student body
1K
Agnes Scott College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$26K
Acceptance
60%
Graduation
51%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1030/19
Wesleyan College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$43K
Acceptance
67%
Graduation
51%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1195/25
Oglethorpe University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
44%
Student body
11K
Median SAT/ACT
1000/20
University of West Georgia’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
46%
Graduation
27%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
965/17
Savannah State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$39K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
70%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1205/27
Berry College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
73%
Graduation
26%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
815/16
Albany State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
72%
Graduation
43%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
905/17
Fort Valley State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
29%
Student body
4K
Dalton State College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
38%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
980/20
Columbus State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Acceptance
95%
Graduation
18%
Student body
10K
Median SAT/ACT
1005/18
Georgia Gwinnett College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$30K
Acceptance
65%
Graduation
44%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1040/20
Young Harris College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$33K
Acceptance
92%
Graduation
41%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1030/20
Brenau University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Acceptance
86%
Graduation
62%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1185/25
Georgia College & State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Acceptance
73%
Graduation
36%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1030/19
Georgia Southwestern State 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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