Small colleges in Washington 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.
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.
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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.
The following list of the best small colleges and universities in Washington is composed mainly of four-year undergraduate schools (though a handful also offer graduate programs). We’ve identified 27 small colleges in Washington. The list below of the 30 best small colleges in Washington. 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
$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
$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
$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
$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
$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
$4K
Graduation
46%
Student body
2K
Peninsula 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
$5K
Graduation
39%
Student body
3K
Lake Washington Institute of Technology’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$22K
Student body
<1K
Antioch University Seattle’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$34K
Acceptance
93%
Graduation
58%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1135/23
Northwest University ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
26%
Student body
4K
Spokane Falls Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
31%
Student body
4K
Skagit Valley College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
42%
Student body
2K
Centralia College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
30%
Student body
4K
North Seattle College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
42%
Student body
3K
Whatcom Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$19K
Graduation
41%
Student body
<1K
Heritage University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
34%
Student body
4K
Clover Park Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
52%
Student body
2K
Bellingham Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
40%
Student body
4K
South Seattle College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
28%
Student body
4K
Yakima Valley College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
33%
Student body
2K
Grays Harbor College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
57%
Student body
2K
Renton Technical 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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