Guide
How the Big Sky list is built
This page lists schools whose IPEDS football conference is Big Sky Conference. It is a football roster, and in this file the football division for these rows is FCS. The table is alphabetical. It is not the full FCS list.
The University of Montana and Montana State are both here. UC Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Sacramento State are here too. A West Coast address does not decide it. The conference string does.
- Schools
- 12
- States
- 8
- Median admit rate
- 88%
- 10 report a rate
- Median earnings
- $55,479
- 10 years after entry
The Big Sky string
The page matches Big Sky Conference exactly. FCS schools in other conferences stay on the FCS page and off this one. A Big Sky member that did not sponsor football would not appear, because this field is football. The file's current rows do sponsor it.
Predominant degree is a separate Scorecard field. It is not the membership test. A row can carry a degree value you do not expect and still belong. Open the campus before you treat that value as the whole institution.
Western FCS and FBS schools nearby
Mountain West schools are FBS in this file and use a different conference string. They are not Big Sky members. A school can sit in Montana, Idaho, or California and play in another conference. State is a column, not a rule.
UC Davis is on this football list. It is not a separate land-grant row. The University of California's land-grant row on this site is Berkeley. Football conference and land-grant status answer different questions.
A conference inside FCS
Use the FCS page when you want every championship-subdivision team. Use this page when you want one conference. Enrollment still varies widely inside the Big Sky, from large public universities to smaller ones. Size is not the sort. Name is.
Admission rates and earnings describe the colleges. They do not seed a bracket. The site has no playoff field and does not invent one from Scorecard numbers.
FCS conferences are selective on purpose
The site does not give a page to every football conference in the file. The Big Sky is here because it is a recognizable FCS league with a clean string. Dozens of other conference names remain unbuilt. Their schools still appear on the FCS page.
The Patriot League and SWAC pages use this same football-string method. Comparing the three is fair. Comparing them to a basketball conference the file does not store is not.
Where the schools are
These schools sit in 8 states. The largest groups are California (3), Idaho (2), Montana (2), Arizona (1), and Colorado (1). The rest of the roll is spread across the other states in the table.
Who runs them
Every school with a reported control is public. Control is the Scorecard field. It is not a judgment about quality.
Predominant degree is the credential the campus awards most often. On this list it is a bachelor's degree at 11 schools and an associate degree at 1 school. A campus can still award other credentials.
How large they are
The largest undergraduate enrollments on this list are University of California-Davis in Davis, California, with 32,253 undergraduates, California State University-Sacramento in Sacramento, California, with 28,350 undergraduates, and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, with 22,903 undergraduates. Enrollment is the undergraduate figure. It is not a ranking, and it leaves out graduate students.
Admission
10 of 12 schools report an admission rate. The median of those rates is 88%. 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 California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo in San Luis Obispo, California, at 31%, University of California-Davis in Davis, California, at 42%, and University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho, at 76%. A lower rate is harder entry. It is not a score for the school.
The highest reported admission rates on this list are The University of Montana in Missoula, Montana, at 96%, California State University-Sacramento in Sacramento, California, at 94%, and Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, at 91%.
What they charge
Among 12 public colleges that report an in-state sticker price, the median is $8,847.
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 12 schools that report earnings, the median of those school-level medians is $55,479. The clock starts at entry, not at graduation. The highest reported medians on this list are California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo in San Luis Obispo, California, at $90,768, University of California-Davis in Davis, California, at $80,838, and California State University-Sacramento in Sacramento, California, at $64,876.
Among 12 schools that report a graduation rate, the median rate is 54%. 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.
3 are also on R1 research universities. 4 are also on R2 research universities. 6 are also on Hispanic-serving institutions.
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.