University of Idaho

Public · Moderately Selective · ID

Photo: Davidlharlan (CC BY-SA 3.0)

School data & stats

TypePublic

LocationID · West

SettingRural

Undergrads7,747

Student:faculty18:1

Outcomes

4-yr grad rate43.2%

6-yr grad rate57.3%

Drop-out rate24.4%

Study abroad—

Cost

In-state tuition$9k

Out-of-state tuition$28k

Application fee—

Community

Racial diversity26.9%

Gender diversity48.8%

International6.6%

Identity—

Overview

The University of Idaho, in Moscow, is the state's land-grant flagship and sits on the rolling wheat country of the Palouse in the Idaho panhandle, a landscape shared with Washington State University eight miles away in Pullman. That proximity creates one of the more distinctive two-flagship-town relationships in the country, with a genuine, friendly rivalry and shared regional culture.

Academics

Natural resources, agriculture, and engineering are longstanding strengths tied directly to the land-grant mission, and the university houses Idaho's only law school, giving it an unusual professional-school anchor for a university of its size. Undergraduate research is genuinely accessible given the scale of the campus, particularly in forestry, wildlife, and agricultural sciences.

Campus & student life

Moscow is a classic college town, small enough that the university dominates its rhythm and identity, with a walkable core campus and a residential culture that is unusually strong for a public university in a sparsely populated state. The relationship with Washington State — shared regional identity, an annual rivalry game, and overlapping social life between the two towns — is a genuine and distinctive part of the experience. Vandals athletics and a strong outdoor recreation culture, given the surrounding wheat country and nearby mountains, round out campus life.

Getting in

Admission emphasizes preparation for the university's core strengths, particularly for students bound for agriculture, natural resources, or engineering, with a review that is accessible relative to many other land-grant flagships.

After graduation

Graduates in natural resources, agriculture, and engineering often move directly into regional and national employers in those industries, and the law school feeds much of Idaho's legal and public-sector leadership.

Worth knowing

Being the only law school in the state gives the University of Idaho outsized influence over Idaho's legal and political class relative to the university's overall size, and the Moscow-Pullman two-town college region is a genuinely unusual setup worth understanding before choosing between the two schools.

uidaho.edu ↗

Admissions

Acceptance rate75.5%

Enrolled mid-50%SAT 990–1230 · ACT 20–26

Test policyoptional

Rec letters0

Deadlines (2026–27 cycle)

AdmissionRolling

Applying