Rhodes College

• Founded in 1848, Rhodes is a residential college committed to excellence in the liberal arts and sciences. Our highest priorities are intellectual engagement, service to others, and honor among ourselves. We enjoy this life on one of the country’s most beautiful campuses in the heart of Memphis, an economic, political, and cultural center, making Rhodes one of a handful of national liberal arts colleges in a major metropolitan area.
• Rhodes has the soul of a liberal arts college coupled with a real-world mindset. Our students put their liberal arts knowledge to work in the world starting their first year. Students learn, play, and serve others with a determination to grow personally and to improve the quality of life within their communities. We also encourage students to reflect on their experiences, adding a deeper degree of value as they examine what they’ve learned and how they’ve grown.

• Memphis is a great city with a rich history, a vibrant culture, and a big future. We are proud to call it home. There’s something for everyone in Memphis — music lovers, art appreciators, sports fans, outdoor enthusiasts, and foodies all find plenty of adventure here.
• The Rhodes Promise ensures that every student will have high-impact, hands-on learning opportunities, including independent research, fellowships and internships, or study abroad, study away, and community-based learning experiences.
• Rhodes regularly garners accolades from The Princeton Review, S. News & World Report, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and many others. Rhodes is recognized by the Peace Corps as a top volunteer-producing college and by the Fulbright Program as a top producing institution.

• The average class size is 15 and the faculty-to-student ratio is 9:1. The classroom experience at Rhodes is intimate and rigorous. We value close learning, with the kind of engaging dialogue that arises when students and professors work together to investigate questions and problems they care about. Ninety-nine percent of full-time faculty members hold the terminal degree in their fields. There are no teaching assistants.
• Rhodes offers students a world-class liberal arts education that encourages them to be impactful community leaders and empowers them to excel in their postgraduate plans. Some of our traditionally strong undergraduate programs include Biology, Business, Chemistry, Computer Science, English, Health Equity, Neuroscience, and Psychology. Students can pursue pre-professional tracks within Health Professions, Law, and Engineering regardless of the major or minor they select. A full list of majors and minors can be found here: Majors & Minors.
• The Foundations Curriculum gives students great freedom to follow their academic interests and aspirations as they develop critical thinking skills that are fundamental to the Rhodes experience, the study of the liberal arts and sciences, and lifelong learning. It also requires students to connect their classroom experience to the real world through internship, research, and/or study abroad opportunities.
• Students take advantage of our unique location in midtown Memphis to do research at sites such as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the National Civil Rights Museum, and the Memphis Zoo; to intern at Fortune 500 companies, local nonprofits, or the Mayor’s office; and to serve the community through the longest student-run soup kitchen in the country and many other service-minded organizations.

Rhodes has 21 departments and 13 interdisciplinary programs with more than 70 majors and minors. A full list of programs can be found here: Majors and Minors.

• Rhodes is a residential community, and students are required to live on campus for three years.
• With over 130 student clubs, organizations, and intramural and club sports, you’ll have no trouble staying busy in anything from improv comedy to Ultimate Frisbee.Students are required to live on campus for the first three years; 75% do so all four years.
• Community service is an essential component of the Rhodes experience. Through the Lynne & Henry Turley Memphis Center for Community Engagement, the college has over 280 community partners; every Rhodes student has meaningful engagement with our city.  Rhodes contributes more than 32,000 hours to the Memphis community each year through programs such as the Bonner Center for Service, Rhodes Impact Summer Experience fellowships, and a wide variety of student organizations with a community focus.
• Approximately 40% of Rhodes students belong to social fraternities and sororities, including 19 sororities and fraternities across three councils: the Interfraternity Council, the National Pan-Hellenic Council, and the Panhellenic Council. Fraternity and sorority houses are nonresidential.For over a century, the Honor Code has built a campus-wide community of trust and mutual respect.You’ll find unlocked bikes and unattended backpacks all over campus, and professors trust students to proctor their own exams and write closed-book essays on their own time.

Almost one-third of our student body competes on 23 men’s and women’s varsity teams in the NCAA Division III Southern Athletic Association. Learn more about our athletics program here: Athletics.

• Rhodes graduates are perceptive thinkers, creative problem solvers, and lifelong learners, and they have the skills and abilities that connect them to the country’s top graduate and professional schools, interesting careers, and fulfilling lives.
• One year after earning their Rhodes degree, 97% of graduates are employed, attending graduate school, or volunteering full-time. Approximately 65% of our students enter the workforce and 35% enter graduate programs or engage in other programs such as the Fulbright U.S. Student Program and the Peace Corps.
• Rhodes graduates are accepted into postgraduate health programs at rates that far exceed the national average. Over the past 5 years, our medical school acceptance rate is 82%. Graduates of Rhodes have attended top medical schools, including Baylor, Boston, Columbia, George Washington, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, and Yale.
• Recent graduates had a 93% total acceptance rate of all students who applied to law school.  We have students admitted to University of Chicago, Harvard, Duke, Virginia, Columbia, NYU, Cornell, Georgetown, Michigan, U Penn, Yale, Vanderbilt, and Washington University.
• Rhodes ranks in the top 2% nationally for the proportion of graduates who went on to earn research PhDs over the past 10 years.

• 5678 applicants for the most recent incoming class
• 50% average acceptance rate over the past 5 years
• 3.75 average unweighted high school GPA
• Rhodes College is test-optional. Of the students who submitted scores:
  • Middle 50% range of ACT: 27-32
  • Middle 50% range of SAT: 1305-1430
• High School Program of the most recent incoming class
  • 62% attended Public or Charter school
  • 38% attended Private school