Small colleges in Texas 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.
Texas offers more than 30 colleges and universities that serve communities of 10,000 students or more. The largest school in the bunch (and in the nation), Texas A&M University in College Station serves more than 65,000 students. The University of Texas at Austin is the next largest, serving about 45,000 students — but it too has a big claim to fame, as the wealthiest public university in the United States. Texas’s private colleges and universities, including Baylor University and Southern Methodist University, are also impressive in size and scope. The majority of these schools have religious affiliations and offer degrees in a variety fields, such as nursing, religious studies, criminal justice, business, and education.
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For students who prefer a more intimate educational environment, Texas offers a long list of smaller public and private colleges and universities, such as Abilene Christian University and University of Texas of the Permian Basin. Additionally, Texas has generous loan forgiveness programs for qualifying nurses, physicians, teachers, legal aid attorneys, and lawyers who work in the Texas Attorney General’s office.
Texas is known for doing things big. Big cities, big open spaces and, of course, big fun. Whether you’re hitting up the live music scene in Austin, catching a Cowboys game in Dallas, or strolling down the River Walk in San Antonio, you’re sure to have a good time. And, with more than 150 higher education institutes, it’s safe to say The Lone Star State is big on education too.
If you’re looking to earn your degree in the state of Texas, you’ll have plenty of higher learning institutes to choose from.
The following list of the best small colleges and universities in Texas is composed mainly of four-year undergraduate schools (though a handful also offer graduate programs). We’ve identified 39 small colleges in Texas. The list below of the 25 best small colleges in Texas. 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
$47K
Acceptance
34%
Graduation
79%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1370/30
Trinity University ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$39K
Acceptance
63%
Graduation
66%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
1122/24
Abilene Christian University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$35K
Acceptance
85%
Graduation
59%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1130/23
St. Mary's University, Texas’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$47K
Acceptance
54%
Graduation
69%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1245/27
University of Dallas’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$44K
Acceptance
49%
Graduation
71%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1210/26
Austin College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$36K
Acceptance
72%
Graduation
47%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1100/21
Houston Baptist University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$47K
Acceptance
49%
Graduation
73%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1230/26
Southwestern University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Graduation
14%
Student body
<1K
Texas College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$50K
Acceptance
91%
Graduation
67%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1152/25
St. Edward's University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$35K
Acceptance
93%
Graduation
43%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1045/20
Concordia University Texas’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$34K
Acceptance
99%
Graduation
56%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1140/23
Dallas Baptist University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
96%
Graduation
66%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1150/23
University of St. Thomas ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Graduation
31%
Student body
<1K
Wiley College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$30K
Acceptance
74%
Graduation
38%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
985/18
Our Lady of the Lake University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$34K
Acceptance
47%
Graduation
34%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1065/21
Texas Wesleyan University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$34K
Acceptance
96%
Graduation
51%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1015/20
Schreiner University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
81%
Graduation
30%
Student body
2K
Sul Ross State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
62%
Graduation
21%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
855/17
Paul Quinn College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$22K
Acceptance
81%
Graduation
25%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
970/19
Wayland Baptist University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
28%
Student body
2K
Brazosport College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
91%
Graduation
55%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1056/20
Hardin–Simmons University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$33K
Acceptance
56%
Graduation
57%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1200/25
LeTourneau University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$25K
Acceptance
97%
Graduation
48%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1065/21
Lubbock Christian University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$29K
Acceptance
47%
Graduation
35%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1020/20
McMurry University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$30K
Acceptance
49%
Graduation
40%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1025/21
Howard Payne University’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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