Here are the best colleges and universities in Washington. Our list will help you find the right kind of school for you.
Of the 40 public options, the University of Washington in Seattle is the largest. Roughly 40,000 students attend classes in fields like nursing, education, biology, and computer science. This public research institution is also affordable, charging about $11,000 for tuition. In fact, none of the public schools in Washington exceed $12,000 in price. This includes community colleges, technical colleges, and four-year universities, making Washington a uniquely affordable place to earn your associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree.
Find college admissions consultants in your state.
Washington also has 24 private institutions. Of those, nine are religious. The most widely known of these, Catholic university Gonzaga enrolls roughly 7,000 students, at a cost of $40,000, in areas such as religious studies, engineering, and law. Central Washington University (CWU) is a smaller public school, serving just over 12,000 students, and has a tuition of $8,000. With 15% of its population being Hispanic, CWU is now recognized as an emerging Hispanic-Serving Institution. Washington health professions also have the opportunity to receive funding for loan repayment through Washington’s Health Professional Loan Repayment Program.
Set in the Pacific Northwest, Washington offers ocean beaches and lush forests. In fact, over half the state is covered in forests, earning Washington its nickname as The Evergreen State. Viewers atop the Space Needle in Seattle can take in the sights of Puget Sound, Mount Rainier, and both the Cascades and Olympic mountain ranges. In addition, prospective students can choose from over 60 higher education institutions in the state.
Check out the top higher education programs and find an affordable degree in Washington.
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.
We’ve identified 47 colleges and universities in Washington that meet our criteria. This list of the top 25 colleges in Washington below focuses on schools that offer bachelor’s degrees. The ranking features fully accredited public and private colleges and universities in Washington.
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
56%
Graduation
82%
Student body
44K
Median SAT/ACT
1345/30
University of Washington’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
59%
Student body
28K
Median SAT/ACT
1125/23
Washington State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$49K
Acceptance
83%
Graduation
73%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1235/27
Seattle University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
94%
Graduation
68%
Student body
15K
Median SAT/ACT
1170/25
Western Washington University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$48K
Acceptance
73%
Graduation
88%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1280/27
Gonzaga University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$56K
Acceptance
54%
Graduation
86%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1345/30
Whitman College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
98%
Graduation
45%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1084/22
Evergreen State College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
53%
Student body
11K
Median SAT/ACT
1025/20
Eastern Washington University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$56K
Acceptance
87%
Graduation
77%
Student body
3K
University of Puget Sound’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$36K
Acceptance
91%
Graduation
65%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1135/22
Seattle Pacific University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
86%
Graduation
58%
Student body
11K
Median SAT/ACT
1060/20
Central Washington University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$48K
Acceptance
86%
Graduation
71%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1185/26
Pacific Lutheran University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$35K
Acceptance
38%
Graduation
53%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1264/27
DigiPen Institute of Technology’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Student body
1K
City University of Seattle’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$31K
Graduation
59%
Student body
2K
Walla Walla University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
34%
Student body
10K
Bellevue College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$48K
Acceptance
91%
Graduation
77%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1170/25
Whitworth University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
86%
Graduation
60%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
1085/20
University of Washington Tacoma’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
88%
Graduation
63%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1140/23
University of Washington Bothell’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$41K
Acceptance
94%
Graduation
61%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1070/20
Saint Martin's University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
33%
Student body
6K
Columbia Basin College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
46%
Student body
2K
Peninsula College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
27%
Student body
6K
Seattle Central College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
34%
Student body
3K
Wenatchee Valley College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
38%
Student body
5K
Highline 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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