Federal Data · No Paid Rankings
Best Colleges in Idaho
Top Idaho colleges ranked by what actually matters after graduation: earnings, completion rates, and what you actually pay. Federal data. No surveys, no sponsorships.
How We Rank Idaho Colleges
Rankings use a composite score from federal data: graduate earnings (28%), graduation rate (25%), social mobility via Pell Grant share (20%), debt burden (15%), and net cost for low-income students (12%). Where a school has not reported one of these, that component is dropped and the remaining weights are rescaled rather than filled in with an estimate. Two adjustments apply: the earnings component is reduced by 13% for schools where graduate students are more than 20% of enrollment and by 25% where they are more than 30%, and a school with no net price on file for families earning up to $30,000 is scored on its overall average net price instead. Only 4-year non-profit schools with sufficient data qualify.
- →Earnings: Median annual earnings 10 years after enrollment. Source: College Scorecard.
- →Graduation rate: Full-time first-time students completing within 150% of normal time. Source: IPEDS.
- →Net price: Average annual cost after all grants and scholarships. Source: IPEDS.
- →Social mobility: Share of students receiving Pell Grants, a direct measure of access for low-income students. Source: IPEDS.
- →Debt burden: Median federal loan debt at graduation. Source: College Scorecard.
Top 9 Colleges in Idaho (2026)
Ranked by composite: earnings, graduation rate, social mobility, debt, affordability.
| # | School | Earnings (10yr) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Brigham Young University-Idaho Rexburg, ID | $53,406 |
| 2 |  University of Idaho Moscow, ID | $54,670 |
| 3 |  Boise State University Boise, ID | $51,658 |
| 4 | The College of Idaho Caldwell, ID | $48,473 |
| 5 |  Idaho State University Pocatello, ID | $45,608 |
| 6 | Northwest Nazarene University Nampa, ID | $51,719 |
| 7 | Lewis-Clark State College Lewiston, ID | $46,001 |
| 8 | College of Southern Idaho Twin Falls, ID | $40,916 |
| 9 |  Boise Bible College Boise, ID | $33,140 |
9 Idaho schools in dataset. All shown. Data: IPEDS + College Scorecard. Updated annually.
All 9 Colleges in the Dataset
Every school in the dataset is already in the ranking above. This list links to each school profile.
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