Guide
Who counts as an FBS school
FBS is the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. This page lists every school whose football division in the file is FBS. Conference pages are subsets. An independent, including Notre Dame, stays on this page when the division says FBS.
The list sorts by state. It is not a poll. A blank conference does not remove a team from the subdivision. The Division I football page repeats this group and adds FCS underneath it.
- Schools
- 128
- States
- 41
- Median admit rate
- 75%
- All schools report a rate
- Median earnings
- $61,248
- 10 years after entry
The bowl subdivision
The field is football division, not a conference name. That is why independents and every FBS conference land in one list. If you want only the SEC or only the Big Ten, use those pages. If you want the subdivision, stay here.
Reclassification lags the source file. A team that has announced a move to FBS appears here when the athletics file says FBS. Until then it stays in the division the file still records. The source line under the table dates that file.
FCS is the other Division I football
FCS teams are Division I and are not FBS. The Ivy League is the example readers know. Those eight are on the Division I football page in the FCS table. They are not on this page. Treating Ivy football as FBS is a category error.
Division II, Division III, NAIA, and junior-college football stay off. So does a Division I school with no football team. The Division I colleges page is the list that keeps those non-football members.
A long list, sorted by state
State sort is there because the subdivision is national. You can scan one state without sorting the whole country by fame. Fame is not a column. Enrollment and earnings are, and they vary by a lot inside FBS.
Price comparisons need the public and private split. Many FBS programs sit at public universities, and the in-state sticker price is not the out-of-state price. Open the campus before you treat the column as a bill.
Subdivision is not a trophy
Moving to FBS is a sports decision. This page records the decision the file already contains. It does not argue that FBS universities are better colleges than FCS universities. The Scorecard columns are the fair comparison, and they do not all point the same way.
Use a conference page when membership is the question. Use this page when the question is the subdivision. Using the subdivision page as a silent ranking of conferences will not work, because the table is not ordered that way.
Where the schools are
These schools sit in 41 states. The largest groups are Texas (13), Ohio (8), California (7), North Carolina (7), and Alabama (6). The rest of the roll is spread across the other states in the table.
Who runs them
By reported control, 110 are public and 18 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 128 schools. A campus can still award other credentials.
How large they are
The largest undergraduate enrollments on this list are Arizona State University Campus Immersion in Tempe, Arizona, with 64,674 undergraduates, Texas A&M University-College Station in College Station, Texas, with 59,615 undergraduates, University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida, with 59,146 undergraduates, Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, with 50,012 undergraduates, and Ohio State University-Main Campus in Columbus, Ohio, with 45,638 undergraduates. Enrollment is the undergraduate figure. It is not a ranking, and it leaves out graduate students.
Admission
128 of 128 schools report an admission rate. The median of those rates is 75%. 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 Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, at 6%. 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 Texas at El Paso in El Paso, Texas, at 100%, University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, at 99%, and Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, at 99%.
What they charge
Among 110 public colleges that report an in-state sticker price, the median is $11,622. Among 18 private colleges that report a sticker price, the median is $65,719.
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 128 schools that report earnings, the median of those school-level medians is $61,248. 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 128 schools that report a graduation rate, the median rate is 72%. 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.
90 are also on R1 research universities. 30 are also on R2 research universities. 22 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.