University of Wisconsin–Madison

In brief

The University of Wisconsin–Madison was founded when Wisconsin became a state, and its charter placed it in the capital, Madison. It is the flagship of the University of Wisconsin System. By our measure of academic influence, it ranks #23 in the United States and #53 in the world. It admitted 45.2% of applicants for fall 2024; admitted students had a median SAT score of 1450 and a median ACT score of 31.

Wisconsin research produced the discovery of the first vitamin, vitamin A, by Elmer McCollum and Marguerite Davis; the anticoagulant warfarin, from Karl Paul Link’s work on sweet clover disease in cattle; and the first line of human embryonic stem cells, made by James Thomson in 1998.

Where UW–Madison’s influence is strongest

UW–Madison’s influence is broad, led by sociology, history, and the natural sciences. Its strongest broad fields, by US rank in our data, are:

• Sociology: #14 in the US (#34 in the world)
• History and earth sciences: #17 each
• Mathematics: #18
• Physics and chemistry: #19 each

Within those fields, UW–Madison is a national leader in several specialties:

• #2 in the US: digital sociology (only the University of Chicago ranks higher)
• #3 in the US: environmental history (behind Harvard and Yale) and cultural sociology (behind the University of Chicago and Harvard)
• #4: family therapy

By comparison, UW–Madison sits further back in nursing (#51), business (#51), and religious studies (#75).

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

Some 19 Wisconsin-connected people have received the Nobel Prize, including the physicist John Bardeen, the chemists Alan MacDiarmid and Paul Boyer, the geneticists Joshua Lederberg and Edward Tatum, Har Gobind Khorana, whose work helped decipher the genetic code, and Howard Temin, co-discoverer of reverse transcriptase. Other Wisconsin figures include the naturalist John Muir, the conservationist Aldo Leopold, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the aviator Charles Lindbergh, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, and the novelist Eudora Welty. Our full lists of UW–Madison’s most influential alumni and faculty appear below.

Frequently asked questions

Is UW–Madison hard to get into? Moderately. It admitted 45.2% of applicants for fall 2024; the middle half of admitted students scored 670–740 on the SAT reading section and 710–780 on math.

What does UW–Madison cost after financial aid? Tuition is $12,166 for Wisconsin residents and $44,191 for out-of-state students in 2025–26. The average net price for aided students with family incomes of $48,000–$75,000 was $6,026 in 2024–25; it ranged from about $3,424 for incomes below $30,000 to $28,208 for incomes above $110,000.

How do UW–Madison graduates do? 89.8% of students who started in 2019 graduated within six years, and 96% of first-year students return for a second year. Ten years after starting college, former students had median earnings of $80,330.

What is UW–Madison best known for academically? By our influence data: sociology, history, and the earth sciences, plus digital sociology, where only the University of Chicago ranks higher in the US.