Have you cured cancer, gone to the Olympics, or won a Nobel Prize? If the answer is no, this is the blog for you. In this blog, we are going to show accessible colleges for students who are achievers but maybe not crazy insane overachievers. If you’re the kind of kid who has straight As but maybe didn’t take honors or AP classes, or maybe you have a mix of As and Bs, good news: there are plenty of colleges you can check out.
We’re going to limit our discussion to colleges that fit a few parameters. First, we want to see colleges with an admit rate of over 50%. Second, we want them to be ranked in the top 150 among national universities or about the top 100 for liberal arts colleges. Next, we want them to graduate approximately 75% or more of the students that come in as undergraduates. And finally, we want to see a retention rate from freshman year of 75% or more because in order to be an awesome school, don’t you kind of want to stay there instead of leave or transfer? We want college campuses where people are generally happy and where they have a positive response to their experience.
The first three colleges that we’re going to profile on this list are small colleges: two liberal arts colleges and one college that’s technically unranked but is a technology institute. Augustana University, Mount Holyoke College, and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology are the first three colleges we’re going to talk about. All three of these are excellent universities; they have good faculty-to-student ratios and are delivering on their promise with high retention rates among their freshmen as well as graduation rates of 75% or above in the past few years. Rose-Hulman is actually unranked by U.S. News and World Report, but it’s a really well-respected college and a little gem that a lot of students don’t know about. It’s very full of intellectually curious people, and it’s a really cool community. So if you’re interested in tech and haven’t heard of it, we recommend you put it on your radar.
Next on our list are universities that are ranked between 100 and 150 on U.S. News and World Report’s national university rankings. From bottom to top, we’ve got University of St. Thomas, University of New Hampshire – Main Campus, Drake University, University of Dayton, University of Vermont, Creighton University, Fairfield University, University of Denver, Miami University – Oxford, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and Saint Mary’s College. So this is a good chunk of colleges that you can get into, but again, are still delivering on their promises. If you’ve got an A-minus average, chances are that you’ve got a really good shot at getting into some of these colleges, and we recommend that you check them out.
Next, we’re going to get into the grand swath of colleges that are ranked between 38 and 89 on U.S. News and World Report. It’s not every college in this range, as you’ll notice, and again, we’re going for specific metrics: a high admit rate and a high retention rate for both freshmen and graduation. These colleges are University of Wisconsin – Madison, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Georgia, Purdue University, University of Washington – Seattle (except for CS majors), Florida State University, Rutgers University, University of Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts – Amherst, Texas A&M University, Yeshiva University, North Carolina State University, Indiana University – Bloomington, Loyola Marymount University, Penn State, Michigan State, UC Santa Cruz, Gonzaga University, Marquette University, Elon University, and University of Delaware.
So there are some ideas for your college list if you’re an A-minus student. We also recommend looking at the chart below to check out the actual data and the GPA ranges to compare them to your own, which could be helpful.
A+ Colleges for A- Students Table
The GPAs in the table below are listed in different ways depending on what information is available from the school. GPAs with two numbers represent the 25th-75th percentile, and if only 1 number is given it is the average. UW stands for unweighted, and W stands for weighted. The (?) means the school did not specify weighted or unweighted.
| US NEWS RANK | GPA | SCHOOL | STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO | GRADUATION RATE | RETENTION RATE | ACCEPTANCE RATE | ENROLLMENT RATE | INSTITUTIONAL AID RATE | DEFAULT RATE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 38 | 3.88 UW | University of Wisconsin-Madison | 18 to 1 | 85% | 96% | 58% | 22% | 42% | N/A |
| 41 | 3.58-3.95 UW | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 19 to 1 | 85% | 93% | 66% | 22% | 51% | N/A |
| 49 | 4.1 W | University of Georgia | 18 to 1 | 85% | 95% | 53% | 24% | 82% | N/A |
| 51 | 3.5-3.9 UW | Purdue University-Main Campus | 12 to 1 | 75% | 92% | 59% | 15% | 51% | N/A |
| 55 | 3.73-3.96 UW | University of Washington-Seattle Campus ** (Except CS) | 20 to 1 | 84% | 94% | 53% | 18% | 43% | N/A |
| 55 | 4.17 W / 3.59 UW | Florida State University | 25 to 1 | 79% | 93% | 56% | 20% | 81% | N/A |
| 55 | 3.8-4.2 W | Rutgers University-New Brunswick | 15 to 1 | 80% | 93% | 58% | 19% | 51% | N/A |
| 62 | 3.88-4.38 W | University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus | 15 to 1 | 82% | 92% | 54% | 13% | 53% | N/A |
| 62 | 3.97 W | Virginia Tech | 14 to 1 | 83% | 94% | 73% | 28% | 52% | N/A |
| 67 | didn't report | University of Connecticut | 17 to 1 | 83% | 92% | 53% | 11% | 62% | N/A |
| 67 | 3.8-4.3 W | University of Massachusetts-Amherst | 18 to 1 | 78% | 91% | 58% | 12% | 69% | N/A |
| 67 | didn't report | Texas A & M University-College Station | 20 to 1 | 79% | 90% | 67% | 31% | 57% | N/A |
| 67 | 3.41 UW | Yeshiva University | 7 to 1 | 88% | 94% | 80% | 50% | 82% | |
| 72 | 4.17-4.48 W / 3.83 UW | North Carolina State University at Raleigh | 15 to 1 | 75% | 93% | 50% | 20% | 54% | N/A |
| 72 | 3.62-4 both W and UW | Indiana University-Bloomington | 17 to 1 | 77% | 89% | 78% | 23% | 59% | 5% |
| 77 | 3.92 W | Loyola Marymount University | 11 to 1 | 79% | 91% | 51% | 10% | 78% | N/A |
| 77 | 3.59-3.93 UW | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus | 16 to 1 | 86% | 93% | 51% | 14% | 68% | N/A |
| 77 | 3.5-4 both | Michigan State University | 17 to 1 | 77% | 92% | 66% | 23% | 51% | N/A |
| 83 | 3.94-4.25 W | University of California-Santa Cruz | 18 to 1 | 78% | 88% | 50% | 8% | 74% | N/A |
| 83 | 3.69 UW | Gonzaga University | 12 to 1 | 83% | 95% | 73% | 20% | 96% | N/A |
| 83 | 3.57 UW | Marquette University | 15 to 1 | 80% | 90% | 74% | 9% | 96% | 3% |
| 89 | 4.07 W | Elon University | 12 to 1 | 83% | 90% | 57% | 15% | 54% | 2% |
| 89 | 3.72 - 4.26 W | University of Delaware | 16 to 1 | 79% | 92% | 67% | 18% | 62% | N/A |
| 100 | 3.6 - 4.1 W | Saint Mary's College | 10 to 1 | 79% | 90% | 80% | 24% | 94% | N/A |
| 105 | 91/100-97/100 | SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry | 16 to 1 | 75% | 85% | 52% | 20% | 76% | N/A |
| 105 | 3.63-4.21 W | Miami University-Oxford | 15 to 1 | 80% | 90% | 65% | 14% | 63% | 11% |
| 105 | 3.72-4 W / 3.55-3.93 UW | University of Denver | 11 to 1 | 77% | 86% | 73% | 9% | 80% | N/A |
| 115 | 3.74 W | Fairfield University | 12 to 1 | 82% | 89% | 65% | 9% | 75% | 1% |
| 115 | 3.04-3.74 UW | Creighton University | 11 to 1 | 79% | 90% | 70% | 11% | 91% | N/A |
| 121 | 3.8 (?) | University of Vermont | 15 to 1 | 77% | 86% | 71% | 9% | 77% | N/A |
| 127 | 3.77 W converted to 4.0 scale | University of Dayton | 16 to 1 | 79% | 91% | 58% | 13% | 86% | N/A |
| 137 | 3.68 UW | Drake University | 13 to 1 | 75% | 88% | 67% | 12% | 94% | 3% |
| 137 | 3.62 UW | University of New Hampshire-Main Campus | 19 to 1 | 79% | 85% | 79% | 17% | 58% | N/A |
| 137 | 3.3-3.93 (?) | University of St Thomas | 14 to 1 | 76% | 89% | 84% | 26% | 91% | N/A |
| LAC- 36 | 3.7-4 W | Mount Holyoke College | 10 to 1 | 85% | 90% | 50% | 14% | 80% | N/A |
| LAC- 94 | 3.76 both | Augustana University | 10 to 1 | 75% | 84% | 65% | 25% | 97% | 3% |
| UR | 4.06 W | Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology | 13 to 1 | 77% | 93% | 58% | 13% | 95% | N/A |
| UR | 3.68 W | Loyola University Maryland | 11 to 1 | 81% | 86% | 61% | 7% | 70% | N/A |
