Northwestern University
Admissions & acceptance rate
First-time freshman admissions: how selective the college is, and how many admitted students choose to enroll.
Graduation rate & outcomes
Completion, retention, and the equity gap between Pell and non-Pell students.
Pell equity
Pell and non-Pell students graduate at nearly identical rates — a notably small equity gap.
Program outcomes
Federal Program Performance Data: how each program's graduate earnings and debt measure up under Financial Value Transparency and Gainful Employment.
Of 250 Title IV programs, 70 pass the federal Gainful Employment test and 1 fails. 179 have graduate earnings too small to publish, so they carry no pass/fail verdict.
Pass / fail distribution
- Passing70 · 28.0%
- No Data179 · 71.6%
- Failing1 · 0.4%
Severity spectrum
Tiers band programs by how far graduate earnings sit above or below the benchmark, from Critical (below −15%) through Safe (above +25%). No data means earnings were privacy-suppressed.
Earnings premium gap
Graduate earnings versus the federal benchmark, worst gaps first.
Debt vs earnings
Median completer debt against median graduate earnings, highest burden first.
Accreditation status & history
Who accredits the institution, current standing, and any past actions.
Higher Learning Commission
Programmatic accreditations · 14
Action history · 11
- Aug 2025Renewal of AccreditationHigher Learning Commission
- Jul 2024Renewal of AccreditationAmerican Psychological Association, Commission on Accreditation · Clinical Psychology (CLPSY) - PhD Doctoral programs
- Feb 2024Renewal of AccreditationAmerican Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Council on Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology · Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) - Graduate degree programs
- Feb 2024Renewal of AccreditationAmerican Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Council on Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology · Clinical doctoral program in Audiology
- Jan 2023Renewal of AccreditationCouncil on Education for Public Health · Public Health Programs (PHPG) - Graduate level program offered outside a school of public health
Tuition & cost
What families actually pay, broken down by family income.
Net price by family income
Negative values mean aid exceeds the published cost of attendance for that income band.
Federal aid volume & trends
Pell grants and federal Direct Loan volume disbursed to students, and how they've trended.
In AY 2024–25, 2,064 students received $13.1M in Pell grants, alongside $206.8M in federal Direct Loans.
Pell recipients · 5-year trend
Loan volume by type · AY 2024–25
Loan awards count each loan type a student holds, not unique borrowers; one student may carry several (e.g. subsidized and unsubsidized), so the per-type figures are the reliable detail.
Student loan default rate
The share of student borrowers who default on federal loans within three years, against the national benchmark.
Of 2,861 borrowers who entered repayment, 5 (0.1%) defaulted within three years — below the 2.3% national rate.
Default rate vs national, by cohort
* Cohorts 2020 and later read near 0% because the federal COVID-19 payment pause (CARES Act) suspended defaults nationwide. These years reflect a national policy, not institutional performance; the 2019 cohort is the last measured under normal repayment.
Academic programs at Northwestern
Top program areas ranked by completions.
Top program families by completions
Enrollment trends & demographics
Fall headcount, 12-month unduplicated enrollment, and student body composition.
Gender split
Race / ethnicity composition
Athletics & Title IX gender equity
How athletic participation, aid, and spending are split between men and women.
Men vs women · spending splits
Sport-by-sport · 14
Campus safety & crime statistics
Reported on-campus crimes over the last three years, including violence and hate crimes.
3-year trend
Criminal offenses by type
By location
- On campus132
- Public property54
Includes 16 in residence halls (a subset of on-campus, not added to the total).
VAWA offenses
Hate crimes by bias
- Race1
- Ethnicity1
Arrests vs disciplinary referrals
Residence-hall fires
- Goodrich House1 fireCookingDamage $0-$99
Data quality: 3 reports were later determined unfounded across the reporting period and are excluded from the totals above.
Student-faculty ratio
Student-to-faculty ratio and instructional staff counts.
Northwestern vs Peer comparison
The peer institutions Northwestern selected for federal comparison reporting.
A larger shape on any axis means this institution outperforms its peers on that dimension. For acceptance rate and net price, lower raw values are inverted so "more selective" and "more affordable" appear larger.
| Carnegie | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SubjectNorthwestern University | 95% | — | 23,856 | $27,143 | R1 Research |
University of Chicago | 96% | 4.5% | 18,566 | $18,967 | R1 Research |
University of Notre Dame | 95% | 11.3% | 13,042 | $27,823 | R1 Research |
Case Western Reserve University | 87% | 36.5% | 12,475 | $38,909 | R1 Research |
Cornell University | 95% | 8.8% | 26,793 | $32,337 | R1 Research |
George Washington University | 84% | 47.1% | 25,374 | $37,454 | R1 Research |
| Peer group median | 95% | 11.3% | 21,211 | $30,080 |
Frequently asked questions about Northwestern University
Quick answers to the questions most often asked about Northwestern.
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