For prospective college students looking for schools that align with their Christian faith and demonstrate academic excellence, here are the best Christian colleges and universities in Pennsylvania.
Prospective students hoping to earn an associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree have over 100 higher learning institutions to choose from. The largest public university is Pennsylvania State University, or Penn State, with a tuition of $18,000, and a student population of over 95,000 across its campuses. As a private institution, the University of Pennsylvania, or simply Penn, is known for its medical, nursing, social work, and business fields. Tuition is $56,000, and the school boasts a 95% graduation rate.
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Students can also attend one of the more than 60 religiously affiliated schools, such as Villanova University or Lafayette College, each with a tuition of about $53,000. Some of the most affordable colleges in the state include the Curtis Institute of Music and the Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia, with tuitions set at $3,000 and $9,000, respectively. Though the average tuition for college in Pennsylvania comes in above the national average, those who practice medicine in underserved areas may qualify for up to $100,000 in loan forgiveness through the Pennsylvania Primary Care Loan Repayment Program.
As the nation’s second state, Pennsylvania’s history runs deep. It’s here where Betsy Ross made the first American flag and where the Declaration of Independence was signed. The Keystone State is also home to some culinary delights, including whoopie pies, soft pretzels, and the famous Philly cheesesteak. Students looking to earn their degree in Pennsylvania will undoubtedly enjoy what the state has to offer.
Check out the state’s top programs and learn more about earning your degree in Pennsylvania.
The following list of the best Christian schools consists entirely of colleges and universities that offer four-year undergraduate degrees. We’ve identified 44 Christian colleges in Pennsylvania. In order to be included in this ranking list of best Christian colleges and universities, a school must self-identify as Christian, be fully accredited, and offer a broad range of bachelor degree programs.
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
$59K
Acceptance
31%
Graduation
92%
Student body
10K
Median SAT/ACT
1395/32
Villanova University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$44K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
79%
Student body
8K
Median SAT/ACT
1215/25
Duquesne University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$57K
Acceptance
36%
Graduation
90%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1345/30
Lafayette College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$35K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
68%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1135/22
Gannon University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$33K
Acceptance
76%
Graduation
65%
Student body
4K
La Salle University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$48K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
81%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1210/26
Saint Joseph's University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$48K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
82%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
1215/26
University of Scranton’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$19K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
83%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1257/26
Grove City College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$36K
Acceptance
64%
Graduation
58%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1130/23
Eastern University ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$39K
Acceptance
71%
Graduation
52%
Student body
1K
Chestnut Hill College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$56K
Acceptance
62%
Graduation
81%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1245/28
Muhlenberg College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$53K
Acceptance
73%
Graduation
73%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1265/27
Allegheny College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$46K
Acceptance
74%
Graduation
65%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1145/24
Arcadia University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$41K
Acceptance
82%
Graduation
65%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1145/25
DeSales University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$44K
Acceptance
65%
Graduation
62%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1130/21
Lycoming College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$28K
Acceptance
82%
Graduation
60%
Student body
2K
Albright College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
94%
Graduation
58%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1066/21
Carlow University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$28K
Acceptance
82%
Graduation
70%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1050/21
Immaculata University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$34K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
51%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1005/18
Neumann University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
57%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1020/20
Holy Family University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$53K
Acceptance
73%
Graduation
75%
Student body
3K
Susquehanna University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$39K
Acceptance
72%
Graduation
73%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1135/23
Saint Vincent College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$40K
Acceptance
59%
Graduation
63%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1140/23
Saint Francis University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$47K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
75%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1160/24
Lebanon Valley College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$21K
Acceptance
69%
Graduation
48%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1055/19
Rosemont 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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