Kenyon College
Gambier, Ohio | Admissions Phone: 740-427-5776
E-mail: admissions@kenyon.edu | Website: www.kenyon.edu
ADMISSION
Admission Rate: 36%
Admission Rate - Men: 33%
Admission Rate - Women: 38%
EA Admission Rate: Not Offered
ED Admission Rate: 70%
Admission Rate (5-Year Trend): -3%
ED Admission Rate (5-Year Trend): +12%
% of Admits Attending (Yield): 24%
Transfer Admission Rate: 30%
# Offered Wait List: 1,857
# Accepted Wait List: 907
# Admitted Wait List: 4
SAT Reading/Writing (Middle 50%): 640-730
SAT Math (Middle 50%): 640-740
ACT Composite (Middle 50%): 29-33
Testing Policy: ACT/SAT Required
SAT Superscore: Yes
ACT Superscore: Yes
% Graduated in Top 10% of HS Class: 55%
% Graduated in Top 25% of HS Class: 79%
% Graduated in Top 50% of HS Class: 96%
ENROLLMENT
Total Undergraduate Enrollment: 1,719
% Part-Time: 0%
% Male: 45%
% Female: 55%
% Out-of-State: 87%
% Fraternity: 27%
% Sorority: 32%
% On-Campus (Freshman): 100%
% On-Campus (All Undergraduate): 99%
% African-American: 4%
% Asian: 4%
% Hispanic: 8%
% White: 70%
% Other: 5%
% Race or Ethnicity Unknown: 3%
% International: 7%
% Low-Income: 10%
ACADEMICS
Student-to-Faculty Ratio: 10:1
% of Classes Under 20: 80%
% of Classes Under 40: 99%
% Full-Time Faculty: 80%
% Full-Time Faculty w/ Terminal Degree: 88%
Top Programs
English
History
International Studies
Neuroscience
Performing Arts
Political Science
Sociology
Retention Rate: 91%
4-Year Graduation Rate: 85%
6-Year Graduation Rate: 89%
Curricular Flexibility: Very Flexible
Academic Rating: 
FINANCIAL
Institutional Type: Private
In-State Tuition: $56,430
Out-of-State Tuition: $56,430
Room & Board: $12,580
Required Fees: $2,140
Books & Supplies: N/A
Avg. Need-Based Aid: $41,461
Avg. % of Need Met: 100%
Avg. Merit-Based Aid: $13,317
% Receiving Merit-Based Aid: 42%
Avg. Cumulative Debt: $26,271
% of Students Borrowing: 46%
CAREER
Who Recruits
1. GBQ Partners
2. DHL Supply Chain
3. Skylight Financial Group
4. TEKsystems
5. Verizon
Notable Internships
1. Penguin Random House
2. Guggenheim Museum
3. Morgan Stanley
Top Industries
1. Business
2. Education
3. Media
4. Operations
5. Social Services
Top Employers
1. JPMorgan Chase
2. Cleveland Clinic
3. Google
4. Amazon
5. US State Department
Where Alumni Work
1. New York City
2. Washington, DC
3. Columbus, OH
4. Chicago
5. Boston
Median Earnings
College Scorecard (Early Career): $48,700
EOP (Early Career): $48,000
PayScale (Mid-Career): $103,800
RANKINGS
Forbes: 71
Money: 248
U.S. News: 27 (T), Liberal Arts Colleges
Wall Street Journal/THE: 91 (T)
Washington Monthly: 47, Liberal Arts Colleges
Inside the Classroom
When your list of notable alumni includes Paul Newman, National Humanities Medal recipient E.L. Doctorow, and largely forgotten US President Rutherford B. Hayes, it’s clear that your college is a unique and special place. Kenyon College in rural Gambier, Ohio, has a history of excellence in drama, English, and across the broader liberal arts that produces passionate and talented alumni who are ready, willing, and able to carve out their legacies within their chosen disciplines.
Kenyon offers thirty-three majors and an additional thirteen concentrations that allow students to complete their education with few nondepartmental core requirements. All undergrads must demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language (AP opt-out is available) and take a quantitative reasoning course, but other than that, a Kenyon education is open and flexible. A senior capstone awaits all would-be graduates and can take many forms, but the project must demonstrate a student’s skills in writing, speaking, collaborating and “distinguish the essential from the trivial.” This latter requirement epitomizes Kenyon’s emphasis on critical thought throughout one’s four years of study.
The student-faculty ratio is 10-to-1, and the most common class size is fifteen. Thirty-two percent of classes are even more intimate, offering single-digit enrollments. Close relationships develop with faculty and often lead to opportunities to engage in undergraduate research. Summer research programs available to students include the Kenyon Summer Scholars Program, a joint program with Ohio State, and the Summer Science Program that sees more than thirty student-professor pairs collaborate on research for an eight- to ten-week period. Roughly half of each junior class packs up its bags and heads off to a distant land for a semester abroad. Students choose from more than 190 programs in fifty countries across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas; the school also sponsors programs in England and in Rome.
English, economics, psychology, and political science are easily the school’s four most popular majors. As alluded to earlier, the drama program is one of the country’s finest and has a lengthy alumni list of recognizable actors and performers. It’s rare to identify an institution’s English program as having an elevated reputation in the minds of employers and graduate schools, but Kenyon’s would be one of the exceptions. For a relatively small school, Kenyon graduates procure nationally competitive scholarships and fellowships at an exceptional clip. In 2018, the college had a dozen Fulbright winners and two Goldwater recipients. It has been a top Fulbright producer for the last decade.
Outside the Classroom
Kenyon’s 1,000-acre campus is located forty-five miles from bustling Columbus and includes a 500-acre nature preserve. All students live on campus, and freshmen are clustered in special residence halls near the Gund Commons. Facilities receive rave reviews from students including the Kenyon Athletic Center that includes tennis courts, a pool, and an indoor track. Approximately 30 percent of Kenyon undergraduates are involved in Greek life but, uniquely, fraternities and sororities are situated within residence halls, leading to a more integrated experience. Close to one-third of students are on the roster of one of the school’s twenty NCAA Division III athletic teams (ten men’s and ten women’s). Plenty of club and intramural sports are available for those seeking a less formal sports pursuit. Intramurals include offbeat games like cornhole and capture the flag. Beyond Greek organizations and sports teams, there are 120 student organizations to consider including five a cappella groups, numerous community service opportunities, and the Kenyon College Dance & Dramatics Club that puts on high-quality student productions. Nature lovers can hike the six miles of trails in the school’s own preserve along the Kokosing River or join the Outdoors Club that takes backpacking and whitewater rafting trips to more adventurous locations such as the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia.
Career Services
The Career Development Office (CDO) employs six professional staff members who work in career development or graduate school advising. With a 280:1 student-to-advisor ratio, Kenyon provides a higher-than-average level of support when compared against the other institutions in this guidebook. While it doesn’t host a large-scale career fair, it does offer employer/graduate school information sessions at a rate of fifteen to twenty per month. The CDO’s strengths lie in its willingness to give individualized attention to students and its involved alumni network.
The online Kenyon Career Network helps link current students to alumni working in their field of interest; there are 8,000 alumni willing to offer their advice and assistance. Job-shadowing opportunities are plentiful, and experiences have included trips to the New York Times, Random House, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The office is adept at helping students find internships, and recent grads have had stints with organizations such as the Museum of Modern Art, the San Diego Padres, and the Library of Congress. In recent years 65-70 percent of employed graduates reported that their jobs were related to their desired career path. Only 66 percent of graduates reported that Kenyon was effective at preparing them for the work of employment. Those indicators suggest that not all graduates are fully satisfied with the career services delivered at this school.
Professional Outcomes
Popular fields for Kenyon grads include education, health care, marketing, nonprofit management, research, and writing and editing. Due to Kenyon’s small size and the diversity of its academic programs, it lacks dense concentrations of alumni at particular companies. Economics majors often land as financial analysts or advisors at firms including BlackRock, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, or Goldman Sachs. English and journalism majors end up at a diverse array of publishing houses, talent agencies, news organizations, and consulting companies. New York City, DC, Columbus, Chicago, and Boston are the five cities drawing the greatest numbers of Kenyon alumni. Median salary for Kenyon grads by the start of midcareer is a modest $48,000, but that can partially be explained by the fact that many alumni pursue lengthy graduate/professional programs that typically pay financial dividends later in life. Other comparable schools including Vassar, Carleton, and Occidental rank similarly.
The 18 percent of graduates who directly enter an advanced degree program enjoy extraordinary success. Within five years of completing their undergraduate education at Kenyon, 50 percent have already finished an advanced degree program and 70 percent are enrolled in one. Law and business school applicants find success at a 99 percent clip and, among medical school candidates with a minimum GPA of 3.25, the acceptance rate is a phenomenal 90 percent. Recent grads have been welcomed into the top law schools at Yale, NYU, Berkeley, Stanford, UVA, Michigan, and the University of Chicago. Future doctors are currently training at prestigious medical schools including Johns Hopkins, Duke, Harvard, Tufts, Vanderbilt, and Northwestern. A successful undergraduate career at Kenyon will make possible admission into the finest graduate and professional schools in the world. Across all disciplines, 98 percent of those applying to an advanced degree program are accepted by one of their top three choices.
Admission
A rarity among elite liberal arts schools, Kenyon’s acceptance rate has risen in recent years. The class of 2019 acceptance rate hit an all-time low of 24 percent, but the Class of 2022 rate was a significantly friendlier 36 percent. The latest incoming freshman class possessed an average GPA of 3.97 and middle-50 percent standardized test scores of 1280-1470 on the SAT and 29-33 on the ACT. Three years ago, when the acceptance rate was a dozen points lower, the SAT range was 1240-1420; the average GPA was the same. Therefore, one can conclude that the profile of the average Kenyon student has not changed much in recent years.
The admissions committee values four factors above all others: rigor of courses, GPA, recommendations, and essays. Test scores, class rank, the interview, talent/ability, extracurricular activities, character/personal qualities, and the level of an applicant’s interest make up the next rung of important considerations. Facing stiff competition from other elite liberal arts schools, Kenyon very much wants to know if you truly want to go there. Applying early decision is the ultimate sign of devotion, and that act is rewarded. Almost 70 percent of ED applicants were accepted, and they comprise a good portion of each incoming class; 43 percent of the Class of 2022 was admitted via ED. Kenyon is looking for academically curious and talented students who are actively involved in their schools/communities. Excellent grades are a must, and demonstrating interest is more valuable here than at your average college. If your heart is set on Kenyon, strongly consider demonstrating your loyalty by applying early.
Worth Your Money?
The 43 percent of current Kenyon students who qualify for financial aid receive grants averaging $41,000 per year; the college meets 100 percent of student need. To help lower the $71k cost of attendance, it also offers annual awards of $13k in merit aid to 42 percent of the undergraduate population. This school is definitely worth your money but, as when considering any institution, we would caution against taking on an excessive amount of debt if you are pursuing a major that is unlikely to lead to fiscal stability upon graduation.