University of Utah

In brief

The University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret, the year Congress created the Utah Territory. It took its present name in 1892 and moved to its East Bench campus in 1900. By our measure of academic influence, it ranks #52 in the United States and #144 in the world. It admitted 86.0% of applicants for fall 2024; admitted students had a median SAT score of 1285 and a median ACT score of 25.

Once closely tied to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is now a secular university with about 33,000 students.

Where Utah’s influence is strongest

Utah’s influence is led by computer science, where it ranks in the US top 20. Its strongest broad fields, by US rank in our data, are:

• Computer science: #18 in the US (#34 in the world)
• Chemistry: #31
• Biology: #37
• Physics: #39
• Anthropology: #40

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

• #1 in the US and the world: computer graphics
• #5: mining engineering
• #6: object oriented programming
• #8: ophthalmology

By comparison, Utah sits further back in philosophy (#101), nursing (#121), and religious studies (#145).

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

Utah is associated with two Nobel laureates, the geneticist Mario Capecchi and the structural biologist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, and with three Turing Award winners, Alan Kay, Edwin Catmull, and Ivan Sutherland. Its computer scientists have also included John Warnock and James H. Clark, and other Utah-linked figures include the novelist Wallace Stegner, the writer Terry Tempest Williams, the chemist Henry Eyring, and Robert Jarvik, the artificial heart pioneer. Our full lists of Utah’s most influential alumni and faculty appear below.

Frequently asked questions

Is Utah hard to get into? No. It admitted 86.0% of applicants for fall 2024; the middle half of admitted students scored 600–690 on the SAT reading section and 590–690 on math.

What does Utah cost after financial aid? Tuition is $9,832 for Utah residents and $31,768 for out-of-state students in 2025–26. The average net price for aided students with family incomes of $48,000–$75,000 was $14,246 in 2023–24; it ranged from about $13,123 for incomes below $30,000 to $21,533 for incomes above $110,000.

How do Utah graduates do? 66.3% of students who started in 2019 graduated within six years, and 86% of first-year students return for a second year. Ten years after starting college, former students had median earnings of $72,729.

What is Utah best known for academically? By our influence data: computer science, chemistry, and biology, plus computer graphics, where it ranks first in the world.