2012 Online Military-Friendly College Rankings
Overall Rankings - Methodology - Other Rankings Data
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the United States had just over 1.4 million active military personnel in 2010. Many of those men and women are now back home and looking to further their education. Luckily, there are many schools out there that provide special services to make this transition easier. These include tuition discounts for military students and/or their dependents, the ability to complete a degree 100% online, credit for military training, and more.
We hope to further assist military members by providing important, honest information about all of the schools that cater to military personnel. We've collected all of the important data on military-friendly schools and ranked them in the hopes that we can help guide people down the right educational path. Our ranking factors include criteria like accreditation, costs of tuition and books, graduation rate, and more.
For more information on our ranking criteria and what constitutes a military-friendly college, please check out our methodology section.
Overall Rankings
The table presented below shows the overall rank of every military-friendly school that made the cut. If you would like more information about the school, simply click on the college's name and you will be taken to a page with more information. To understand more about the data we collected and how we used it to make this list, please refer to our methodology section below.
Rank |
School |
School Type |
Repayment Rate |
Retention Rate |
Tuition |
Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # 1 | University of Wisconsin | Non-Profit | 78% | 80% | $14,933 | 90.33 |
| # 2 | Iowa State University | Non-Profit | 73% | 86% | $18,563 | 86.18 |
| # 3 | University of North Dakota Online | Non-Profit | 68% | 79% | $16,373 | 85.67 |
| # 4 | Missouri University of Science and Technology | Non-Profit | 75% | 85% | $20,543 | 82.97 |
| # 5 | University of Alaska | Non-Profit | 62% | 71% | $15,776 | 80.39 |
| # 6 | Washington State University | Non-Profit | 68% | 82% | $20,531 | 79.98 |
| # 7 | Texas A&M University - Grad | Non-Profit | 74% | 91% | $22,817 | 79.25 |
| # 8 | Virginia Tech | Non-Profit | 77% | 92% | $23,217 | 79.19 |
| # 9 | Judson College | Non-Profit | 61% | 63% | $13,900 | 78.25 |
| # 10 | California University of Pennsylvania Online | Non-Profit | 54% | 74% | $11,914 | 78.13 |
| # 11 | Northcentral University | For-Profit | 57% | 63% | $8,400 | 77.53 |
| # 12 | Old Dominion University | Non-Profit | 56% | 80% | $16,966 | 77.44 |
| # 13 | Western Governors University | Non-Profit | 51% | 76% | $5,870 | 77.42 |
| # 14 | University of Oklahoma | Non-Profit | 55% | 83% | $18,295 | 75.48 |
| # 15 | University of West Florida | Non-Profit | 54% | 73% | $15,319 | 75.32 |
| # 16 | Colorado State University-Global | Non-Profit | 67% | 83% | $23,095 | 74.52 |
| # 17 | Michigan Technological University | Non-Profit | 79% | 81% | $24,527 | 74.34 |
| # 18 | New Mexico State University | Non-Profit | 51% | 74% | $16,680 | 71.37 |
| # 19 | Robert Morris University | Non-Profit | 60% | 73% | $21,550 | 70.52 |
| # 20 | University of South Florida | Non-Profit | 45% | 88% | $16,007 | 70.23 |
| # 21 | Jones International University | For-Profit | 40% | 89% | $11,880 | 69.08 |
| # 22 | Colorado Technical University - Online Grad | For-Profit | 39% | 84% | $10,665 | 67.68 |
| # 23 | Thomas Edison State College | Non-Profit | 47% | --- | $7,190 | 67.66 |
| # 24 | Bellevue University | Non-Profit | 55% | 38% | $6,150 | 67.14 |
| # 25 | Regent University | Non-Profit | 41% | 72% | $12,330 | 64.99 |
| # 26 | Indiana State University | Non-Profit | 48% | 64% | $16,626 | 64.69 |
| # 27 | Liberty University Online | Non-Profit | 45% | 71% | $18,064 | 62.61 |
| # 28 | University of Colorado | Non-Profit | 67% | 85% | $29,493 | 62.21 |
| # 29 | Lamar University | Non-Profit | 44% | 65% | $16,224 | 61.76 |
| # 30 | University of Phoenix | For-Profit | 44% | 52% | $10,120 | 60.57 |
Methodology
Our overarching goal with these rankings is to create a trustworthy and standardized method to rank online, military-friendly institutions based on reliable statistics. All of the data used was provided by The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the U.S. Department of Education.
Our general ranking criteria is explained on our main 2012 Online College Rankings page. There are 2 differences we would like to spell out here:
- Every college that was considered for this list had to be "military-friendly." This was determined based on Military Advanced Education's annual Guide to Top Military-Friendly Colleges & Universities. Military education professionals helped to create a questionnaire for any university wishing to be considered on the list. Colleges were then individually judged by a panel based on their questionnaires. Criteria for a military-friendly stamp included discounted tuition, credit for military training, dedicated admissions advisors, specially trained staff to deal with military needs, liberal withdrawal policies, on-campus veterans services, and more.
- We did not take our student feedback into account when ranking these colleges. We simply do not have enough data this year to weigh this factor heavily and did not want to put any schools at a disadvantage because of this.
Other Rankings Data
Each year we put together these rankings to try to help people in their educational journey. If you're interesting in all online schools, regardless of military benefits, or specifically in online, non-profit schools, please check out our other 2012 rankings.
