Small colleges in Georgia are a great option for students interested in a more intimate campus experience, more personal attention from excellent professors, and more immediate access to support services. Whether the focus is on the technical or on the liberal arts, small colleges give you the chance to pursue a well-rounded education while working closely with classmates and professors in a dynamic community atmosphere.
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.
The following list of the best small colleges and universities in Georgia is composed mainly of four-year undergraduate schools (though a handful also offer graduate programs). We’ve identified 32 small colleges in Georgia. The list below of the 25 best small colleges in Georgia. To be included schools must fully accredited, and must have student body populations below 5,000 students.
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
$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
$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
$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
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
$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
$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
$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
$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:
Tuition + fees
$22K
Acceptance
35%
Graduation
33%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
995/18
Point University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Acceptance
96%
Graduation
23%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1005/19
College of Coastal Georgia’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$26K
Acceptance
99%
Graduation
35%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1075/22
Reinhardt University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Acceptance
76%
Graduation
29%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1025/19
Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
14%
Student body
2K
East Georgia State 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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