Guide
How the ACC football list is built
A school is on this page when its IPEDS football conference is the Atlantic Coast Conference. The list is football membership. It is alphabetical. It is not a ranking of ACC athletics, and it is not every school that plays some ACC sport.
Duke is on this list. Duke's football conference is the ACC, and Duke is also on the Ivy Plus page. Those facts can both be true. Notre Dame's football team is coded as a Division I-A independent, so Notre Dame is not on this football list.
- Schools
- 17
- States
- 11
- Median admit rate
- 22%
- All schools report a rate
- Median earnings
- $78,354
- 10 years after entry
The Atlantic Coast Conference string
The page matches the football conference field exactly. Atlantic Coast Conference is the string IPEDS uses. A school enters when that field matches, and it leaves when the field changes. This site does not keep a second, unofficial ACC.
Football membership and full athletic membership are not always the same idea in the real conference. This file records football. A school that competes with the ACC in other sports, and not in football, is outside the field this page can read.
Notre Dame and other near misses
Notre Dame is the case readers bring up. Its football conference in this file is Division I-A Independents. Independence keeps it on the FBS page and off this one. A scheduling agreement is not a conference string.
An SEC, Big Ten, or Big 12 football school stays off even if it used to share a region with the ACC. History of membership is not the current field. The source line under the table is the year to read the roster against.
What the columns are for
Admission rate, earnings, and price describe the university. They do not describe the football team. Use them to compare the institutions that share a football conference. Use a sports source if you want standings.
The map, when it is drawn, plots the campuses. A wide conference can cross many states. The state counts below tell you how spread out the roster is without turning the page into a travel guide.
One conference among several
The ACC page uses the same rule as the Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC pages. That is deliberate. A reader can move between them and know the membership test did not change.
Duke's other lists are a reminder that one university can be many things in this file. Football conference, research class, and religious affiliation are separate fields. This page only applies the football one.
Where the schools are
These schools sit in 11 states. The largest groups are North Carolina (4), California (2), Florida (2), Virginia (2), and Georgia (1). The rest of the roll is spread across the other states in the table.
Who runs them
By reported control, 10 are public and 7 are private nonprofit. A blank control stays out of that split.
Predominant degree is the credential the campus awards most often. On this list it is a bachelor's degree at 17 schools. A campus can still award other credentials.
How large they are
The largest undergraduate enrollments on this list are University of California-Berkeley in Berkeley, California, with 33,068 undergraduates, Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, with 32,212 undergraduates, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, with 30,923 undergraduates. Enrollment is the undergraduate figure. It is not a ranking, and it leaves out graduate students.
Admission
17 of 17 schools report an admission rate. The median of those rates is 22%. Schools with no reported rate stay out of the median. A missing rate is not an open door, and it is not a closed one.
The lowest reported admission rates on this list are Stanford University in Stanford, California, at 4%, Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, at 6%, and University of California-Berkeley in Berkeley, California, at 11%. A lower rate is harder entry. It is not a score for the school.
The highest reported admission rates on this list are University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky, at 79%, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, at 63%, and University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at 58%.
What they charge
Among 10 public colleges that report an in-state sticker price, the median is $14,345. Among 7 private colleges that report a sticker price, the median is $67,040.
Sticker price is not net price. Grants, waivers, and a service commitment can move the bill by a wide margin. Open a school for the net-price figures.
Earnings and graduation
Among 17 schools that report earnings, the median of those school-level medians is $78,354. The clock starts at entry, not at graduation. The highest reported medians on this list are Stanford University in Stanford, California, at $124,080, Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, at $103,937, and Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus in Atlanta, Georgia, at $102,772.
Among 17 schools that report a graduation rate, the median rate is 87%. A blank rate is left out. It is not treated as zero.
Also on other lists
Some of these schools also meet the rule for another list on this site. The overlap is a second flag or a second classification. It is not a second ranking.
15 are also on R1 research universities. 2 are also on R2 research universities.
How these figures work
Admission rate, enrollment, sticker price, earnings, and graduation rate all come from the College Scorecard. Earnings are the median 10 years after a student entered the school. Tuition for a public college is the in-state sticker price. Tuition for a private college is the published sticker price. None of these is net price after aid.
A blank field stays blank. This page does not turn a blank admission rate into an open door, a blank fee into a free application, or a blank earnings figure into zero. The table above is membership under the rule in this guide. Sort order is not a quality ranking.