Here are the best colleges and universities in Wisconsin. Our list will help you find the right kind of school for you.
Between community colleges, technical schools, and universities, Wisconsin has 30 public schools. All the public schools in Wisconsin have affordable tuitions, ranging from $4,000 to $11,000. The University of Wisconsin – Madison has over 35,000 students in attendance, making it the largest in the state. The tuition runs about $11,000, and the school boasts an 85% graduation rate. Public affairs, veterinary medicine, and human ecology are just some of the fields students can study here.
Find college admissions consultants in your state.
Of Wisconsin’s 29 private schools, 18 are religious. With just under 10,000 students, Marquette University is the largest, and tuition for this school is about $42,000. Located in Milwaukee, this Catholic, Jesuit university offers degrees in fields like business, engineering, physical therapy, and law. Also located in Milwaukee, the state’s smallest institution, the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology, is a private graduate school with just over 30 students, and is geared toward those earning their doctoral degree in clinical psychology. Wisconsin, like many states, also provides a loan forgiveness program to those who are working in the health care field.
When people think Wisconsin, they might immediately crave cheese. After all, the state is home to a museum dedicated to all things cheese, including the annual making of a 90-pound wheel of Swiss. But The Beaver State is also known for its more than 15,000 lakes, including Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Prospective students looking to earn their associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree will enjoy the food, landscape, and educational variety Wisconsin has to offer.
Learn more about Wisconsin’s higher education opportunities by checking out the state’s variety of 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 Wisconsin for earning a bachelor’s degree.
We’ve identified a total of 33 colleges and universities in Wisconsin, 32 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
$11K
Acceptance
57%
Graduation
88%
Student body
38K
Median SAT/ACT
1390/29
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University of Wisconsin–Madison’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$46K
Acceptance
82%
Graduation
84%
Student body
11K
Median SAT/ACT
1220/26
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Marquette University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$53K
Acceptance
58%
Graduation
78%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1230/27
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Beloit College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$47K
Acceptance
74%
Graduation
67%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1105/22
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Ripon College ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$51K
Acceptance
69%
Graduation
79%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1315/28
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Lawrence University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$44K
Acceptance
60%
Graduation
70%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1275/27
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Milwaukee School of Engineering’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
46%
Student body
22K
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University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
53%
Graduation
51%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
935/18
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Mount Mary University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$41K
Acceptance
84%
Graduation
73%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1155/24
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St. Norbert College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
91%
Graduation
65%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1080/22
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Edgewood College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$39K
Acceptance
64%
Graduation
56%
Student body
<1K
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Northland College ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$34K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
53%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1055/20
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Cardinal Stritch University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$34K
Acceptance
72%
Graduation
70%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1135/23
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Carroll University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
87%
Graduation
59%
Student body
7K
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University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$18K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
56%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1105/22
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Maranatha Baptist University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$29K
Acceptance
68%
Graduation
48%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
980/19
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Marian University ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
90%
Graduation
57%
Student body
6K
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University of Wisconsin–Green Bay’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
84%
Graduation
65%
Student body
10K
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University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$31K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
43%
Student body
1K
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Alverno College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
56%
Student body
10K
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University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
62%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1110/24
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Carthage College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$31K
Acceptance
71%
Graduation
61%
Student body
4K
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Concordia University Wisconsin’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
62%
Student body
11K
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University of Wisconsin–Whitewater’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
90%
Graduation
60%
Student body
7K
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University of Wisconsin–Stout’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
86%
Graduation
43%
Student body
2K
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University of Wisconsin–Superior’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
58%
Student body
5K
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University of Wisconsin–River Falls’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$31K
Acceptance
92%
Graduation
46%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
982/19
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Lakeland University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$29K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
64%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1160/23
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Viterbo University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
75%
Graduation
71%
Student body
10K
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University of Wisconsin–La Crosse’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
96%
Graduation
64%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1155/24
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Wisconsin Lutheran College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
81%
Graduation
56%
Student body
7K
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University of Wisconsin–Platteville’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Acceptance
51%
Graduation
59%
Median SAT/ACT
988/18
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Photo By: Rosina Peixoto - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
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