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 Georgia offer a diverse selection of degree programs with opportunities for a highly individualized educational experience.
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.
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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.
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 37 liberal arts colleges in Georgia. To be ranked among the 30 best liberal arts colleges in Georgia, schools must fully accredited institutions.
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
$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
$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:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
69%
Graduation
31%
Student body
6K
Clayton State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
75%
Graduation
8%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
870/15
Paine College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Acceptance
99%
Graduation
23%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
985/18
Middle Georgia State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$33K
Acceptance
60%
Graduation
44%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1074/21
LaGrange College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$23K
Acceptance
71%
Graduation
43%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1030/20
Shorter University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$18K
Acceptance
59%
Graduation
29%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
905/16
Andrew College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
13%
Student body
4K
Georgia Highlands College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$21K
Acceptance
58%
Graduation
49%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1035/19
Toccoa Falls College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$38K
Acceptance
98%
Graduation
68%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1215/26
Covenant 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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