Guide
How open admission is defined here
A college is on this page when it reports an admission rate of at least 99.5 percent. That cutoff is the rule. The table sorts by undergraduate enrollment, so the largest campuses come first. The first row is the biggest reporting campus, not the most open campus. Every row already clears the same bar.
A college with no reported admission rate stays off, even if students call it open admission. A missing rate is not 100 percent. Community college is not the rule either. A selective college stays off. An open-admission college that is not a community college stays on.
- Schools
- 141
- States
- 41
- Median admit rate
- 100%
- All schools report a rate
- Median earnings
- $45,771
- 10 years after entry
A reported rate, not a mission statement
The Scorecard admission rate is the only input. At least 99.5 percent means the college reports that it admits essentially everyone who applies, within the way that rate is defined. This page does not read mission statements for the phrase open door.
Sorting by enrollment answers a practical question. The largest of these colleges are the ones most people will actually be near. Smaller colleges that meet the rate are still full members. They sit lower in the table.
Blank rates stay off
Many colleges, including some community colleges, do not report an admission rate. They are absent. Adding them would turn a reported rate into a guess. If you know a campus is missing, check whether the rate is blank on its profile.
A college that admits most but not nearly all applicants stays off. Ninety percent is not the cutoff. The line is 99.5 percent so the page means open admission rather than merely not very selective.
Open entry is not one kind of college
Predominant degree on this list is often an associate degree or a certificate, and it is not always either. Read the degree split below. Then look at price. Public colleges dominate many states, and the in-state sticker price is the public figure.
Test policy is separate. An open-admission college can still have a value in the test-policy field, or a blank. Do not assume scores are irrelevant just because the admission rate is high. Check the policy pages if that is your question.
A long list, paged on purpose
The roll is long enough that the table shows 100 colleges at a time. Page links sit under the table. The guide stays on later pages so the definition travels with the rows. Page 1 is the canonical address.
This is not a list of easy colleges in some broader sense. Earnings, graduation, and net price still differ. Open admission tells you about entry. It does not tell you the rest of the Scorecard.
Where the schools are
These schools sit in 41 states. The largest groups are New York (20), California (13), Pennsylvania (10), Missouri (9), and Texas (9). The rest of the roll is spread across the other states in the table.
Who runs them
By reported control, 69 are private nonprofit, 48 are private for-profit, and 24 are public. 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 78 schools, a certificate at 45 schools, and an associate degree at 18 schools. A campus can still award other credentials.
How large they are
The largest undergraduate enrollments on this list are Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, New Hampshire, with 163,164 undergraduates, The University of Texas at El Paso in El Paso, Texas, with 21,005 undergraduates, Middle Georgia State University in Macon, Georgia, with 6,574 undergraduates, Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, with 4,772 undergraduates, and Martinsburg College in Cheyenne, Wyoming, with 2,491 undergraduates. Enrollment is the undergraduate figure. It is not a ranking, and it leaves out graduate students.
5 schools are reported as online-only. The others are not marked that way in this file.
Admission
Every school here reports an admission rate of at least 99.5%. That cutoff is the rule for this page. 141 schools report a rate, and the median of those rates is 100%.
The highest reported admission rates on this list are Martinsburg College in Cheyenne, Wyoming, at 100%, Reach University in Oakland, California, at 100%, and Texas A&M University-Central Texas in Killeen, Texas, at 100%.
What they charge
Among 12 public colleges that report an in-state sticker price, the median is $7,587. 12 other public colleges on the list do not report one. Among 98 private colleges that report a sticker price, the median is $17,304. 19 other private colleges on the list do not report one.
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 104 schools that report earnings, the median of those school-level medians is $45,771. The clock starts at entry, not at graduation. The highest reported medians on this list are Chamberlain University-New Jersey in North Brunswick, New Jersey, at $92,405, Chamberlain University-Louisiana in Jefferson, Louisiana, at $92,405, and Chamberlain University-Missouri in St. Louis, Missouri, at $92,405.
Among 107 schools that report a graduation rate, the median rate is 59%. A blank rate is left out. It is not treated as zero.
Athletics in this file
1 reports NCAA Division I athletics and 1 plays FBS football. A blank athletics field means this file has no division for that campus. It does not prove the campus has no team.
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.
6 are also on liberal arts colleges. 11 are also on Hispanic-serving institutions. 9 are also on men's colleges.
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.