Here are the best colleges and universities in Utah. Our list will help you find the right kind of school for you.
Students hoping to earn their associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree in Utah can choose from among 18 different colleges and universities. Ten of these schools are private, including a fully online school — Western Governors University — which serves almost 80,000 students. Brigham Young University in Provo, one of Utah’s two religiously affiliated schools, has some of the state’s top programs in religious studies, history, and business.
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While tuition at private schools can be costly, fees at these two schools fall below the national average, ranging between $6,000 and $7,000. Utah’s public universities are also on the cost-friendly side. Utah Valley University, the state’s largest public school, serves over 28,000 students and has a sticker price of about $6,000. The University of Utah, another affordable option, is close behind, with a student population of just under 28,000 students. Here, students can earn degrees in fields such as computer science, chemistry, engineering, and anthropology.
If you’re someone who lives life to the extreme, Utah may be just the place for you. Careening down the hills at its world-class ski resorts, braving the rapids on white-water rafting trips, hiking through national parks, and speeding across mountain bike trails are just some of the ways visitors and residents of The Beehive State can get their thrills. Another selling point for Utah? Average tuition for this state’s colleges and universities falls thousands of dollars below the national average.
Learn more about Utah’s higher education opportunities by checking out the state’s many affordable colleges and universities.
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.
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 Utah for earning a bachelor’s degree.
We’ve identified a total of 13 colleges and universities in Utah, 8 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
$9K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
67%
Student body
28K
Median SAT/ACT
1261/25
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University of Utah’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
69%
Graduation
75%
Student body
35K
Median SAT/ACT
1315/28
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Brigham Young University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
91%
Graduation
50%
Student body
23K
Median SAT/ACT
1180/24
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Utah State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$38K
Acceptance
87%
Graduation
69%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1145/24
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Westminster College ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
36%
Student body
19K
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Weber State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
76%
Graduation
46%
Student body
9K
Median SAT/ACT
1130/23
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Southern Utah University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
32%
Student body
29K
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Utah Valley University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Graduation
47%
Student body
113K
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Western Governors University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
What are Custom College Rankings?
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