- The next accreditation review is scheduled for December 31, 2024.
| SAT Test | Middle 50% |
| ERW | 630 to 710 |
| Math | 590 to 680 |
| ACT Test | Middle 50% |
| Composite | 27 to 32 |
With their net price calculators, many colleges and universities give an idea of what merit-based aid might accompany need-based aid. For schools that share such data, we also provide financial aid data in the Finanical Aid sections.
There are some caveats to consider when using the net price estimates:
- The net price calculation is weighted by this school's proportion of students living on- and off-campus and this school's estimate of off-campus costs, which may cause the net price methodology be a bit inconsistent from school to school.
- Parental income and student financial aid eligibility is sometimes more complicated than the simple family income number reported here.
- The net price calculation for all students is inclusive of students who received any institutional or government aid, but at the family income levels the net price only considers the tuition paid by those who qualified for federal aid.
You can get a little better guess at what you would pay by using this school's net price calculator.
It's important to remember that a school's published costs may not be indicative of what it will actually cost to attend. Time magazine wrote about this in their article Yes, you can get a college to cut its tuition price. Nonetheless, this inflation-adjusted look at the historic annual costs for tuition, fees, books, and supplies can give you an idea of the costs you might expect in the coming years. Comparing the total costs inclusive of room and board (if applicable) with the annual net price estimates in the previous tab will help you determine the financial aid package to expect.
Private and public universities' charges are difficult to compare due to the in-state and out-of-state price differences of public universities, and therefore we only compare American University to other private schools within your chosen context group.
Understanding the rules and process that determine who gets financial aid can be intimidating. Here are some quick links to help:
- Visit American University's Net Price Calculator for the most accurate estimate of your anticipated costs. Every school publishes a Net Price Calculator that does its best to give you a fair estimate of what you might expect to pay. Many calculators consider your high school record as part of the calculation. This will be far more accurate than any of the averages or published tuition values that you see here.
- FederalStudentAid, a government site that will walk you through the federal financial aid process. There are a number of kinds of student loans and other aid, and this site can walk you through all of the choices you will need to make.
The American University deadline for priority financial aid consideration is October 15. Applicants are notified of results on April 1 and must respond by April 1.
Across the country, graduation rates are surprisingly low. In fact, Forbes Magazine suggests that they are unacceptably low. However, from another point of view, sometimes graduation rates simply reflect the relative preparation of the students who enter. Colleges with a mission to help people coming from less advantaged backgrounds, such as first-generation and low-income students, may have low graduation rates despite relatively strong outcomes for students who face many obstacles to success. Without the context provided in these views of completion rates, it can be tricky to separate predatory schools that take financial advantage of under-prepared students from those that are actively seeking to encourage and help those students.
For the consumer choosing a school, once you have narrowed your list to those schools that you can afford and that seem likely to admit you, consider the outcome measures in this section and choose the specific measures that best describe your plans. Very simply, schools with high graduation rates and high loan repayment rates will likely give you the best opportunity to succeed.
How might your earnings compare with other people your age? Opportunity Insights used IRS data to track almost every person born in the US in the years 1980 to 1991, and they ranked the mean (average) 2014 earnings of students who attended American University in comparison to all people in the US the same age. Although this data is now a little old, the scope of this project was awesome and gives us a glimpse at alumni performance that we cannot find until a new study of this incredible magnitude is performed.
The Equality Project found that by age 34, people's relative earnings had leveled off, so it's a good assumption that approximately 68% of the population will earn less than American University alumni.
You might notice a little earnings dip at young ages for some of the top bachelor's institutions. This coincides with the years that many alumni may be in graduate school and earning less.
Opportunity Insights studied groups of all children born in the US in the same year for each birth year from 1980 to 1991. This grouping included every single US child who had a valid SSN or ITIN (tax identification number) and could be linked to parents with non-negative income.
The incomes of all families in a birth year group are measured when the child is 15-19 and these incomes are averaged. The calculated incomes from all families in the group were arranged from smallest to largest, and divided into five groups of equal size. On the left of the diagram, you can see the relative distribution of American University's students between the family income divided into fifths formed by looking at the entire US group.
In 2014, all people from the same birth year were divided into a new set of five groups that were determined by their individual labor earnings for that year. The students from this birth year who primarily attended American University between the ages of 19 and 22 were divided into these five groups, and the percent in each group is shown on the right of the diagram.
The diagram lets you see the proportion in each original income group who travel to each earnings group, and provides some insight into the likelihood of financial success after attendance.
If you'd like to understand the nitty gritty details of this interesting data, be sure to check out the well-written Opportunity Insights report by selecting SOURCES under the figure.
Traditionally, the long-term faculty at a school are hired as Assistant Professors. After about six years, they then advance to the Associate Professor level after proving excellence in three areas: teaching, service to the institution, and significant contributions to their field of expertise. Assistant professors who are not promoted to the Associate level are usually required to leave the school. The rank of Professor is reserved for senior faculty who have demonstrated the highest standing in those three areas. The standards of excellence differ widely across institutions; nonetheless, the presence of a large proportion of faculty in the three professor ranks suggests you will be taught by faculty who are invested in their academic fields and in the school. Generally, instructors with any of the three professor titles will hold the highest possible (terminal) degree in their academic fields.
The instructor/lecturer positions are generally held by full-time faculty who are focused on teaching alone, often for lower-level classes. These positions usually require some advanced education or experience, but not the highest (terminal) degree in a given academic field. Those teaching with no academic rank may be hired to teach in mostly non-academic fields, giving skills- or vocation-based guidance.
- Basketball|Patriot League
- Cross country/track|Patriot League
- Choral groups
- Drama/theater
- National Fraternities
- National Sororities
- Radio station
- Student newspaper
- Television station
- 3-2 program in Engineering with University of Maryland, College Park
- Accelerated Degree
- Credit for advanced placement
- Distance learning
- Double-major allowed
- English as a Second Language program
- External Degree Program
- Graduate courses available to undergraduates
- Honors Program
- Independent study courses
- Internships
- Off campus study: American University
- Off campus study: Catholic University of America
- Off campus study: Corcoran College of Art & Design
- Off campus study: Gallaudet University
- Off campus study: George Mason University
- Off campus study: Georgetown University
- Off campus study: Howard University
- Off campus study: Marymount University
- Off campus study: The George Washington University
- Off campus study: The University of Maryland
- Off campus study: The University of the District of Columbia
- Off campus study: Trinity Washington University
- Orientation program
- Part-time degree programs
- Services for learning disabilities
- Student-designed major
- Study abroad
- Summer session
- Teacher certification programs
- Health clinic
- Personal/psychological counseling
- Remedial services
- Academic/career counseling services
- Employment services for current students
- On-campus day care for children of students
- Dedicated point of contact for support services for veterans, military servicemembers, and their families
- Member of Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges
- Recognized student veteran organization
- Yellow Ribbon Program
A rigorous academic program requires that students and faculty alike are engaging in independent research, and that activity requires strong library support. You can get some useful information here:
- How strong and how balanced between traditional physical books and easily-accessed (but expensive) electronic journals and other resources is this library?
- How much is this library borrowing from other libraries? The number of interlibrary loans received can indicate the school's commitment to getting the resources on-campus researchers need, and also of the research activity on campus.
- How big a resource is this library to other libraries? A large number of outgoing interlibrary loans speaks highly of the value of its content.
The presence of a library in and of itself is a good thing. Increasingly, libraries are comfortable and inviting spaces for individual and group study sessions. Librarians can be incredibly friendly guides in your quest to find materials that aid your learning.
How much funding does this university have for research in your discipline? This is your primary evidence of nationally-recognized scholarship coming out of this university, and provides a good indicator of the availability of research funding for graduate students and post-docs. You can select bars to drill down into the specific disciplines funded, or further into the sources of that funding. If you hover on the bars, you can see summary details. The dollar amounts reflect the institution's annual spending, inclusive of external grants.
Because this data is collected by the National Science Foundation (NSF), it is focused on traditional science-technology-engineering-mathematics (STEM) disciplines. There are only hints of funding outside of these areas.
A high proportion of international and out-of-state students speaks to reputation and offers an opportunity for diverse interactions in and out of class.
American University has undergraduates from 50 states or territories and 106 countries.
American University is a private not-for-profit school. Along with publicly-controlled schools, not-for-profit schools do not have the goal of annual profit, but they do want to have healthy finances with adequate revenue to meet all expenses. On the other hand, private for-profit schools have creating a profit for shareholders as an annual goal.
American University has an endowment of $691,969,608. Colleges and universities with huge endowments generally have their annual performance dominated by investment successes and failures, and fluctuations tend to be outside of the range of other schools. Under the following endowment section, you can check whether their endowment is generally stable, which is the true measure of financial stability for schools in this class.
Here we examine assets at American University in context, and it seems most fair to adjust for the size of the institution. We examine the assets per full-time-equivalent student so that we level the playing field for size.
There's a catch to these assets, though. Many gifts to a school's endowment have strings attached; the money is restricted to a specific purpose. Assets shown in green below are unrestricted, and are very important to a school's ability to meet its financial obligations. Some assets are the land and buildings that a school must have in order to function, and these may appear as green (unrestricted assets) but are nonetheless less helpful in meeting annual financial commitments. This look at assets is only a piece of the puzzle as we decide if a school is stable.
