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 Oklahoma offer a diverse selection of degree programs with opportunities for a highly individualized educational experience.
Less than half of the schools in Oklahoma are private schools. However, students who attend one these schools can expect a more intimate college experience, as each has a student population smaller than 4,000 students. The largest private school, the University of Tulsa, offers degrees in fields like education, criminal justice, and literature, with tuition fees around $41,000. The public schools tend to be more cost-friendly, with tuition ranging from $4,000 to $9,000 per year.
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The University of Oklahoma, the state’s largest public school, costs about $9,000 and serves over 24,000 students. Here, students can partake in competitive on-campus programs in fields like communications and social work, or pursue one of the 30 graduate degrees and certificates online. Oklahoma is also home to several religiously affiliated schools, like Oral Roberts University and Bacone College. Students hoping to pursue a career as a physician, physician’s assistant, or dentist may also want to consider earning their degree here as the state offers several loan forgiveness programs to those who qualify.
The state of Oklahoma is serious about its food — so serious they even declared an official state meal, which consists of fried okra, cornbread, barbecue pork, squash, biscuits, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken fried steak, black-eyed peas, and pecan pie. Those hoping to feed both their bellies and their minds can attend one of Oklahoma’s more than 40 colleges and universities.
To learn more about earning your degree in Oklahoma, check out some of the state’s top programs.
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 22 liberal arts colleges in Oklahoma. To be ranked among the best liberal arts colleges in Oklahoma, schools must fully accredited institutions.
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
35%
Student body
12K
University of Central Oklahoma’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
56%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1114/21
Oral Roberts University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$25K
Acceptance
61%
Graduation
60%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1125/24
Oklahoma Christian University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
99%
Graduation
36%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
998/21
Northeastern State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
93%
Graduation
40%
Student body
4K
Southwestern Oklahoma State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Graduation
18%
Student body
2K
Langston University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
96%
Graduation
39%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1035/20
East Central University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
31%
Student body
4K
Southeastern Oklahoma State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
58%
Graduation
55%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1105/23
Oklahoma Baptist University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
47%
Graduation
9%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
873/15
Bacone College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
23%
Student body
3K
Cameron University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
70%
Graduation
26%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1020/19
Northwestern Oklahoma State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$29K
Acceptance
83%
Graduation
36%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1035/20
Oklahoma Wesleyan University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$27K
Graduation
48%
Student body
2K
Southern Nazarene University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Graduation
25%
Student body
3K
Rogers State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Graduation
27%
Student body
1K
Oklahoma Panhandle State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
64%
Graduation
41%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
912/21
University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$16K
Acceptance
39%
Graduation
55%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
900/21
Randall University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$20K
Acceptance
62%
Graduation
30%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
992/18
Southwestern Christian University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
41%
Student body
2K
Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
17%
Student body
4K
Oklahoma State University–Oklahoma City’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$19K
Graduation
43%
Student body
1K
Mid-America Christian University’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.