Where to Start Looking for New Hampshire Colleges
The New Hampshire Higher Education Assistance Foundation (NHHEAF) is the place to start looking for New Hampshire colleges. NHHEAF sponsors the Center for College Planning in Concord where students can use the library to search for information on colleges. The center provides students with free help in filling out the FAFSA and navigating the college application process. NHHEAF also sponsors an annual free college convention, Destination College, for high school juniors and parents and includes a college fair and college planning workshops.
The website has a variety of college planning publications that you can download in PDF format including a College Planning Guide for Student Athletes. The site includes calculators for college cost, college savings, and expected family contribution as well as a financial aid award evaluator. You can also listen to the College Gurus Radio Show online.
New Hampshire students can get free access to Bridges which is the usual college planning/search website and includes and interest inventory. They can also use Kuder Career Planning for career assessment and planning.
Students planning on starting at a community college should visit NHTransfer where you can look up courses to see which courses transfer. It also has information on the New Hampshire Transfer Connections program that allows students to start at a community college and then transfer to a public four-year institution.
You can find out what majors are offered by colleges in New Hampshire by visiting the VisitNHColleges.org website. The site also list dates for college open houses.
Some Numbers to Help You Find a College
There are 12 four-year New Hampshire colleges with 500 or more full-time undergraduates according to the Integrated Post-secondary Education Data System. Approximately 49 percent of students attend one of the seven private colleges while 51 percent of students attend one of the five state institutions.
The private New Hampshire colleges have an average four-year graduation rate of 52.7% and the public universities have an average five-year graduation rate of 51.8%. Five New Hampshire colleges meet the DIY College Rankings 50-50 profile requirements.
The average SAT score for college-bound seniors in New Hampshire was 524 for Critical Reading and 530 for Math. The 75th percentile scores were 590 for Critical Reading and 600 for Math. Of the schools that reported SAT scores, three colleges had 75th percentile scores equal to or higher than the state in both categories.
The top 20 colleges SAT test takers in New Hampshire applied to:
- University of New Hampshire
- Keene State College
- Plymouth State University
- University of Vermont
- Northeastern University
- University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Boston University
- University of Maine
- University of Rhode Island
- Southern New Hampshire University
- University of Massachusetts Lowell
- University of New England
- University of Connecticut
- Quinnipiac University
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute
- Saint Anselm College
- Franklin Pierce University
- Dartmouth College
- Boston College
- Brown University
New Hampshire Colleges Conferences and Divisions
List of New Hampshire Colleges
In the following table, the four-year graduation rate is used for private colleges and the five-year rate for public colleges. The data are based on the data available from IPEDS in December of 2014 which are available on the DIY College Search spreadsheet.
New Hampshire Colleges with Test Scores and Graduation Rates
(download PDF version)
| Name | Type | Full-time Under- graduates | 4/5 Yr Grad Rate | % Admitted | SAT CR 75th% | SAT Math 75th% | ACT 75th% | Net Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colby-Sawyer College | Private | 1386 | 48 | 83 | 22701 | |||
| Dartmouth College | Private | 4200 | 87 | 10 | 780 | 780 | 34 | 20900 |
| Franklin Pierce University | Private | 1465 | 39 | 85 | 530 | 550 | 21 | 26357 |
| Granite State College | Public | 918 | 9 | 14025 | ||||
| Keene State College | Public | 4538 | 62 | 82 | 540 | 540 | 19000 | |
| New England College | Private | 1416 | 34 | 90 | 28966 | |||
| Plymouth State University | Public | 3795 | 54 | 77 | 530 | 540 | 23 | 17773 |
| Rivier University | Private | 891 | 43 | 89 | 500 | 510 | 21 | 26072 |
| Saint Anselm College | Private | 1878 | 71 | 74 | 610 | 620 | 27 | 30469 |
| Southern New Hampshire University | Private | 9399 | 47 | 79 | 520 | 540 | 28095 | |
| University of New Hampshire at Manchester | Public | 599 | 56 | 73 | 580 | 560 | 17906 | |
| University of New Hampshire-Main Campus | Public | 12063 | 78 | 78 | 590 | 610 | 21545 |