Indiana University Bloomington

By James A. Barham, PhD

In brief

Indiana University Bloomington (IU), founded in 1820, is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. Its 16 schools offer some 550 degree programs and certificates, with business and communications among the most sought-after. By our measure of academic influence, it ranks #30 in the United States and #83 in the world. It admitted 78.2% of applicants for fall 2024; admitted students had a median SAT score of 1285 and a median ACT score of 30.

Where IU’s influence is strongest

IU’s influence is led by nursing, communications, and the social sciences. Its strongest broad fields, by US rank in our data, are:

• Nursing: #17 in the US (#26 in the world)
• Communications: #18
• Anthropology: #21
• Psychology and social work: #22 each

Within those fields, IU is a national leader in several specialties:

• #1 in the US: informatics and cheminformatics
• #2 in the US: optometry (only Midwestern University ranks higher) and sexology (only Harvard ranks higher), the field of its longtime professor Alfred Kinsey
• #4: psycholinguistics

By comparison, IU sits further back in religious studies (#54), physics (#57), and engineering (#71).

How we measure influence: these ranks come from the citations and recognition earned by a school’s faculty and alumni in each discipline, not from surveys or admissions statistics. See our methodology.

Notable people

IU is associated with eight Nobel laureates, among them the geneticist Hermann J. Muller, the biologists Salvador Luria and James D. Watson, and the economist Elinor Ostrom. Its faculty and alumni also include the sexologist Alfred Kinsey, the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, the novelist Theodore Dreiser, the songwriter Hoagy Carmichael, the violinist Joshua Bell, the war correspondent Ernie Pyle, the novelist Suzanne Collins, and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Our full lists of IU’s most influential alumni and faculty appear below.

Frequently asked questions

Is IU hard to get into? No. It admitted 78.2% of applicants for fall 2024; the middle half of admitted students scored 590–690 on the SAT reading section and 580–710 on math.

What does IU cost after financial aid? Tuition is $12,144 for Indiana residents and $42,295 for out-of-state students in 2025–26. The average net price for aided students with family incomes of $48,000–$75,000 was $10,091 in 2024–25; it ranged from about $6,683 for incomes below $30,000 to $27,092 for incomes above $110,000.

How do IU graduates do? 80.0% of students who started in 2019 graduated within six years, and 91% of first-year students return for a second year. Ten years after starting college, former students had median earnings of $70,105.

What is IU best known for academically? By our influence data: nursing, communications, and anthropology, plus informatics and cheminformatics, where it ranks first in the country.