Guide
How the SEC football list is built
A school is on this page when its IPEDS football conference is the Southeastern Conference. The list is the football roster. It is alphabetical. It is not a ranking of programs, and it does not include a school that only shares a region with the SEC.
The same rule builds the Big Ten, ACC, and Big 12 pages. Notre Dame is not in this conference file. A school with no football team is not here, however large its athletics department is in other sports.
- Schools
- 16
- States
- 12
- Median admit rate
- 67%
- All schools report a rate
- Median earnings
- $62,652
- 10 years after entry
The Southeastern Conference string
The page matches that conference name in the football field. Membership changes when the field changes. This site does not pin the SEC to a historical count of teams. The number of rows is whatever the current file contains, and the fact card at the top of this guide reports it.
Football members can sit outside the geographic South. If the file codes them as Southeastern Conference, they belong on this page. The state column is there so the map in your head can be corrected by the data.
Region is not membership
A university in an SEC state's capital is not an SEC school unless the football field says so. State and conference are different columns. Mixing them is the most common way to misread this page.
Other football subdivisions stay off. An FCS team in the same state is on the Division I football page in the FCS table, not here. Division II and Division III teams are further away from this rule.
What you can learn from the rows
The useful comparison is institutional. Look at in-state price, admission rate, and earnings for the universities that share a football conference. Then open a campus if you want net price, debt, and program detail.
Do not look here for last season's results. They are not in the Scorecard, and they are not why a school is on the list. A team can have a bad year and remain a member. A team can have a great year in another conference and remain off.
The parent list is FBS
SEC football schools are FBS schools. The FBS page is the full bowl subdivision, including conferences this site does not give their own page. Use that page when the question is subdivision rather than conference.
A map of SEC campuses is linked from this page when the map data exists. The map is the same membership as the table. It is not a rival definition of the conference.
Where the schools are
These schools sit in 12 states. The largest groups are Alabama (2), Mississippi (2), Tennessee (2), Texas (2), and Arkansas (1). The rest of the roll is spread across the other states in the table.
Who runs them
By reported control, 15 are public and 1 is 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 16 schools. A campus can still award other credentials.
How large they are
The largest undergraduate enrollments on this list are Texas A&M University-College Station in College Station, Texas, with 59,615 undergraduates, The University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas, with 42,855 undergraduates, and University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, with 35,629 undergraduates. Enrollment is the undergraduate figure. It is not a ranking, and it leaves out graduate students.
Admission
16 of 16 schools report an admission rate. The median of those rates is 67%. 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 Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, at 6%, University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, at 24%, and The University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas, at 27%. 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 Mississippi in University, Mississippi, at 97%, University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, at 93%, and University of Missouri-Columbia in Columbia, Missouri, at 78%.
What they charge
Among 15 public colleges that report an in-state sticker price, the median is $11,954. One private college on this list reports a sticker price. That price is $67,498.
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 16 schools that report earnings, the median of those school-level medians is $62,652. The clock starts at entry, not at graduation. The highest reported medians on this list are Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, at $91,565, The University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas, at $75,121, and Texas A&M University-College Station in College Station, Texas, at $72,097.
Among 16 schools that report a graduation rate, the median rate is 75%. 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.
All of them are also on R1 research universities. 1 is 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.