University of Connecticut
Storrs, Connecticut | Admissions Phone: 860-486-3137
E-mail: beahusky@uconn.edu | Website: www.uconn.edu
ADMISSION
Admission Rate: 49%
Admission Rate - Men: 48%
Admission Rate - Women: 50%
EA Admission Rate: Not Offered
ED Admission Rate: Not Offered
Admission Rate (5-Year Trend): -5%
ED Admission Rate (5-Year Trend): Not Offered
% of Admits Attending (Yield): 22%
Transfer Admission Rate: 61%
# Offered Wait List: 2,027
# Accepted Wait List: 1,249
# Admitted Wait List: 502
SAT Reading/Writing (Middle 50%): 600-690
SAT Math (Middle 50%): 610-730
ACT Composite (Middle 50%): 26-31
Testing Policy: ACT/SAT Required
SAT Superscore: Yes
ACT Superscore: Yes
% Graduated in Top 10% of HS Class: 50%
% Graduated in Top 25% of HS Class: 84%
% Graduated in Top 50% of HS Class: 98%
ENROLLMENT
Total Undergraduate Enrollment: 19,133
% Part-Time: 3%
% Male: 49%
% Female: 51%
% Out-of-State: 21%
% Fraternity: 10%
% Sorority: 14%
% On-Campus (Freshman): 96%
% On-Campus (All Undergraduate): 65%
% African-American: 6%
% Asian: 11%
% Hispanic: 11%
% White: 56%
% Other: 3%
% Race or Ethnicity Unknown: 3%
% International: 10%
% Low-Income: 18%
ACADEMICS
Student-to-Faculty Ratio: 16:1
% of Classes Under 20: 52%
% of Classes Under 40: 78%
% Full-Time Faculty: 81%
% Full-Time Faculty w/ Terminal Degree: 93%
Top Programs
Accounting
Biology
Education
Exercise Science
Finance
Nursing
Pharmacy
Retention Rate: 93%
4-Year Graduation Rate: 73%
6-Year Graduation Rate: 85%
Curricular Flexibility: Somewhat Flexible
Academic Rating: 
FINANCIAL
Institutional Type: Public
In-State Tuition: $13,798
Out-of-State Tuition: $36,466
Room & Board: $13,258
Required Fees: $3,428
Books & Supplies: $950
Avg. Need-Based Aid: $14,041
Avg. % of Need Met: 58%
Avg. Merit-Based Aid: $10,604
% Receiving Merit-Based Aid: 36%
Avg. Cumulative Debt: $22,208
% of Students Borrowing: 57%
CAREER
Who Recruits
1. CGI Inc.
2. ScribeAmerica
3. Mercer
4. USDA
5. Fidelity Investments
Notable Internships
1. iHeartMedia
2. UBS
3. New York Yankees
Top Industries
1. Business
2. Education
3. Operations
4. Healthcare
5. Sales
Top Employers
1. Pratt & Whitney
2. Travelers
3. The Hartford
4. Aetna
5. Cigna
Where Alumni Work
1. New York City
2. Hartford, CT
3. Boston
4. Washington, DC
5. San Francisco
Median Earnings
College Scorecard (Early Career): $58,400
EOP (Early Career): $56,700
PayScale (Mid-Career): $105,200
RANKINGS
Forbes: 130
Money: 42
U.S. News: 64, National Universities
Wall Street Journal/THE: 105 (T)
Washington Monthly: 62, National Universities
Inside the Classroom
New England is so overflowing with superior institutions of higher education that it is genuinely a challenge to travel more than a few miles through Massachusetts or Connecticut without accidentally bumping into one of the top colleges on the planet. However, that surplus of elite universities is balanced by a notable dearth of stellar public institutions. For applicants seeking such a school, you’ll have to travel to the sleepy town of Storrs, Connecticut, a half-hour east of Hartford, where you’ll find a regional giant with a national reputation. The main campus of the University of Connecticut is home to 19,000+ undergraduates, fourteen schools and colleges, and 116 undergraduate majors. While 76 percent of the student body are state residents, there are also undergraduates hailing from forty-two states and 106 countries presently enrolled, and the percentage of outsiders has been on the rise in recent years.
Whether you enter the School of Business, School of Engineering, School of Fine Arts, or other undergraduate college at Storrs you will encounter a core curriculum of basic requirements. In an effort to ensure “that a balance between professional and general education be established and maintained in which each is complementary to and compatible with the other,” UConn mandates two courses in each of arts and humanities, social science, science and technology, and diversity and multiculturalism. Further, students must demonstrate competencies in information literacy, quantitative reasoning, writing, and a second language via additional coursework.
Considering the university’s 16:1 student-to-faculty ratio and 8,300 graduate and professional students, one might expect all UConn courses to contain a vast sea of undergraduate faces. However, the school does a nice job of creating a balance of classroom experiences with 52 percent of sections enrolling fewer than twenty students, and only 16 percent containing more than fifty. To help forge even deeper connections with faculty, the Office of Undergraduate Research encourages students to schedule advising sessions to apply for both internal and external research posts. There are also formal programs to target including the Work-Study Research Assistant Program, the Honors Program, or the University Scholar Program that make research a centerpiece of the educational experience. Hundreds of study abroad options are on the table, and the university has taken steps to increase the rate of participation that currently sits around 15 percent.
From a sheer volume standpoint, the four most commonly conferred undergraduate degrees are in business (13 percent), health professions/nursing (12 percent), engineering (12 percent), and the social sciences (12 percent). In terms of prestige and national reputation, programs in business, pharmacy, and nursing carry a good deal of weight. Speaking of reputation, UConn’s growing stature has helped its students capture an increasing number of highly competitive scholarships in 2019 including seven Fulbright Scholarships, four Goldwater Scholarships, a Udall Scholarship, and a Truman Scholarship.
Outside the Classroom
Unlike many universities of its size, a healthy 70 percent of undergraduates live on UConn’s 4,100-acre campus. Freshmen are not required to live on campus, but 95 percent do. Overall, four semesters of housing are guaranteed to all entering students, and there are plenty of traditional apartments, suites, and residential learning communities available. At UConn you will be treated to one of the best college athletic programs in the country. Husky fans are a fervent bunch, and of the twenty-four varsity teams, nothing captures the attention of all of campus quite like the basketball squads. Since 1999 the men’s hoops squad has captured four NCAA titles, and the women’s team has won an astounding ten championships. Greek life draws 10 percent of men and 14 percent of women, adding up to 2,700 members in forty chapters. In total, there are 700 student clubs and five cultural centers. Amenities include an on-campus movie theater, ice rink, and a 191,000-square-foot recreation center that opened in 2019. Volunteer spirit is strong as students contribute a collective 1.3 million hours of community service each year. Major cities like Hartford, Providence, and Boston are close enough for a weekend jaunt.
Career Services
There are twenty-one full-time employees at the University of Connecticut Center for Career Development (CCD) who serve as career consultants, corporate relations specialists, experiential learning coordinators, and operations specialists. There are an additional six career consultants who work in the School of Business and School of Engineering, bringing the total of professional staff to twenty-seven. (That does not include the career services staff members located at UConn’s branch campuses.) The CCD’s 708:1 student-to-advisor ratio is higher than the average school in this guidebook, but it is fairly typical for a school with close to 20,000 undergraduates.
Two-thirds of Huskies utilize career services at some point in their four years, and that rate is higher among students with successful postgraduate outcomes; 80 percent of 2018 graduates who found a job or graduate school within six months of receiving their diplomas had taken advantage of the CCD’s services. Experiential learning—including internships—were completed by 80 percent of graduates. The school forges strong ties to national as well as local companies. In fact, the seventeen Fortune 500 companies located in Connecticut all recruit on the Storrs campus. There are number of career fairs throughout the year with the largest being the fall career fairs (All-University & STEM) that bring in 150 employers each per day and attract more than 2,000 students. Overall, the UConn CCD provides quality assistance to those it is able to reach, and its industry connections, particularly those with Connecticut-based companies, are strong.
Professional Outcomes
Eighty-eight percent of the graduating Class of 2018 had reached a positive outcome (job, grad school, military, volunteer position) within six months of earning their degrees. Among the 63 percent that had found employment, the largest numbers landed at Aetna, Cigna, Lockheed Martin, PwC, The Hartford, Travelers, and United Technologies. Historically, massive numbers of alumni also have been employed by Pratt & Whitney, Pfizer, IBM, and Deloitte. A sampling of the top job titles held by 2018 grads included financial analyst, consultant, engineer, nurse, sales consultant, and business analyst. The median midcareer salary (at age 34) is $57,000, slightly better than some higher-prestige schools within state borders like Connecticut College or Wesleyan. Huskies can be found in the largest packs in New York City and Greater Hartford—73 percent who attended a Connecticut high school remain in the state postgraduation. Boston, DC, San Francisco, and Philadelphia also have their fair share of UConn alumni.
Many of the 22 percent of 2018 graduates who immediately entered a graduate or professional program did so at their home university that caters to a total of 7,000 grad students. Based on the most recent data available, UConn grads are accepted to medical school at a 65 percent clip, a far better rate than their peers. Recent acceptances include many elite medical institutions including those at the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, the University of Chicago, Vanderbilt, and UVA. As many as twenty-five undergraduates per year matriculate into the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Law acceptances in the past three years include an impressive list of the nation’s top institutions such as Harvard, Yale, William & Mary, Cornell, Columbia, and Boston College.
Admission
UConn accepted 49 percent of the 34,886 Class of 2022 hopefuls, representing the lowest acceptance rate in school history and quite a departure from the UConn of a generation ago. In 2000 it received one-third as many applications and admitted more than 80 percent of in-state applicants. The mean SAT of freshmen arriving at the Storrs campus was 1306, and the mid-50 percent range was 1210-1420; a decade ago, a 1300 would have put you in the 75th percentile of attending students. Even with the changes to SAT in that time, that is still an indicator of a major jump in selectivity. Exactly half of the entering class in 2018-19 finished in the top decile of their graduating cohort, and 84 percent placed within the top quartile. That group included an astonishing 175 valedictorians and salutatorians.
For a suddenly swamped admissions office, the most important factors in evaluating applicants are the quickest to break down: standardized test scores, GPA, class rank, and the overall rigor of one’s high school curriculum. First-generation status, essays, recommendations, extracurricular activities, volunteer work, character/personal qualities, and talent/ability are secondary considerations. There are no early action or early decision options at UConn; everyone faces the same January 15 deadline, but applicants should submit by the December 1 priority deadline for their best chance at merit aid offerings.
Worth Your Money?
For Constitution State residents UConn is a rock-solid deal at $13k for tuition and a total cost of attendance hovering around $30k. Those in the other New England States can attend at a discount for under $40k, but those from other states will see an annual COA of $53k. This school is a no-brainer for state residents as it’s hard to get a combination of a cheaper/better education in the Northeast. For everyone else, the value of the degree would depend on the intended area of study. However, those not eligible for a discount of some kind could very likely locate better deals within their home states.