Here are the best colleges and universities in Indiana. Our list will help you find the right kind of school for you.
Among Indiana’s schools are some well-known colleges and universities, including the University of Notre Dame, Purdue University, and Butler University. While tuition and student population vary greatly among these schools, each boasts a high graduation rate. The state’s largest public university, Indiana University Bloomington, also notes a high graduation rate for its roughly 40,000 students and offers tuition just above the national average at $11,000.
Find college admissions consultants in your state.
Additionally, students hoping to attend a school with a religious affiliation have nearly 30 options to choose from. Students at these schools can study areas like engineering, business, philosophy, religious studies, and law. Indiana offers loan forgiveness programs for health care workers who work in areas with labor shortages as well as for lawyers providing public legal aid. Additionally, graduates of Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law pursuing public interest law can apply for a special grant program that will help cover the cost of preparing and sitting for the bar exam.
With town names like Popcorn and Santa Claus, it is clear Indiana is no stranger to a good time. Along with these unique towns, Indiana also hosts the Indianapolis 500, a long-distance auto race; boasts a thriving art scene; and has been home to iconic celebrities, including Larry Bird, James Dean, and David Letterman. Students wanting to experience all Indiana has to offer while studying have the option of attending one of Indiana’s more than 50 higher education institutes.
Explore Indiana’s more than 50 colleges and universities to find a program and future career path that’s right for you.
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 42 colleges and universities in Indiana that meet our criteria. This list of the top 25 colleges in Indiana below focuses on schools that offer bachelor’s degrees. The ranking features fully accredited public and private colleges and universities in Indiana.
Tuition + fees
$10K
Acceptance
67%
Graduation
83%
Student body
43K
Median SAT/ACT
1315/28
Purdue University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
80%
Student body
41K
Median SAT/ACT
1255/27
Indiana University Bloomington’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$59K
Acceptance
19%
Graduation
97%
Student body
13K
Median SAT/ACT
1475/33
University of Notre Dame’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Acceptance
87%
Graduation
67%
Student body
20K
Ball State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$54K
Acceptance
68%
Graduation
87%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1245/26
DePauw University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$45K
Acceptance
87%
Graduation
65%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1180/25
Valparaiso University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$49K
Acceptance
59%
Graduation
67%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1235/26
Earlham College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$43K
Acceptance
76%
Graduation
82%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1240/27
Butler University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
92%
Graduation
41%
Student body
10K
Indiana State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$40K
Acceptance
64%
Graduation
67%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1189/26
University of Evansville’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$46K
Acceptance
63%
Graduation
75%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1220/26
Wabash College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$34K
Acceptance
70%
Graduation
56%
Student body
1K
Manchester University ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$29K
Acceptance
91%
Graduation
72%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1125/23
Indiana Wesleyan University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$36K
Acceptance
92%
Graduation
63%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1108/25
Goshen College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$48K
Acceptance
82%
Graduation
81%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1155/25
Saint Mary's College ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
52%
Student body
24K
Median SAT/ACT
1100/22
Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$37K
Acceptance
70%
Graduation
78%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1195/25
Taylor University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
87%
Graduation
38%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1040/20
Indiana University South Bend’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$40K
Acceptance
69%
Graduation
72%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1135/23
Hanover College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
28%
Student body
8K
Vincennes University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
67%
Graduation
45%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1035/20
Indiana University East’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$33K
Acceptance
67%
Graduation
64%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1080/22
Anderson College, Indiana’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$37K
Acceptance
64%
Graduation
60%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1075/21
Marian University ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$34K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
61%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1150/24
Trine University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
94%
Graduation
53%
Student body
8K
Median SAT/ACT
1075/22
University of Southern Indiana’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.