Here are the best colleges and universities in Mississippi. Our list will help you find the right kind of school for you.
The majority of the learning institutes in Mississippi are public schools, with the University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, being the largest. This university, located in Oxford, boasts alumni like William Faulkner, John Grisham, and James Meredith. Tuition at Ole Miss runs about $9,000, just below the national average. The eight private colleges, all of which have religious affiliations, range in tuition costs from $10,000 at Rust College to $40,000 at Millsaps College.
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Students who attend these schools have the option to pursue degrees in fields like nursing, business, dentistry, Christian ministry, education, and literature. Additionally, all of these private schools are considered small schools, serving under 5,000 students. Mississippi also offers up to $12,000 of undergraduate loan forgiveness, over the course of four years, for teachers who work in designated shortage areas or who teach in critical shortage subjects, like special education or mathematics.
From Mississippi mud pie to fried chicken, Mississippi brings a whole new meaning to the term comfort food.
The Magnolia State is easy on the eyes too. With nearly endless forests spilling over with hickory, pine, and oak trees, the intricate river system, and the Gulf Island National Seashore, Mississippi is a true destination for lovers of outdoor adventure. And students who plan on earning their associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree in Mississippi have 31 colleges and universities to choose from.
Explore some of the top schools and career paths Mississippi has to offer.
Related: Differences between research universities and teaching colleges
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great. This is why, at the undergraduate level, we rank the best colleges and universities based on what we call “Concentrated Influence”. Concentrated Influence takes the combined influence score of a college or university’s top academic influencers (including faculty and alums) and divides it by the school’s total number of undergraduates.
Using concentrated influence gives small and mid-sized schools an opportunity to shine by taking away the size advantage of larger universities. A small school with proportionately more influential faculty than a large school, whose influence in absolute terms may be bigger, will nonetheless score higher in a concentrated influence ranking. Our approach highlights undergraduate schools that truly rank for excellence, regardless of size.
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.
Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Concentrated Influence provides a ranking that is free from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
Find out more about our ranking methodology here.
Every fall, more than 2 million high-school graduates will enroll in colleges and universities across the United States. Finding the best college for your educational, personal, and professional goals may be challenging. The purpose of this ranking is to help you manage this challenge with an accurate, objective, and up-to-date ranking of the best colleges and universities in Mississippi for earning a bachelor’s degree.
We’ve identified a total of 15 colleges and universities in Mississippi, 9 of which satisfy our criteria. The list below of the best schools in the state focuses on those that offer four-year undergraduate degrees, includes both public and private colleges and universities, and also meet the following two conditions:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
71%
Graduation
40%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
865/18
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Tougaloo College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$41K
Acceptance
70%
Graduation
68%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1185/23
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Millsaps College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
88%
Graduation
67%
Student body
20K
Median SAT/ACT
1135/25
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University of Mississippi’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
99%
Graduation
46%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1080/21
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Mississippi University for Women’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$19K
Acceptance
29%
Graduation
65%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1145/25
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Mississippi College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
64%
Student body
20K
Median SAT/ACT
1175/26
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Mississippi State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
96%
Graduation
50%
Student body
13K
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University of Southern Mississippi’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
55%
Graduation
53%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1065/24
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William Carey University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$16K
Acceptance
99%
Graduation
51%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1105/20
View profile
Blue Mountain College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
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