Arizona State University Campus Immersion

Public · Moderately Selective · AZ

Photo: John M. Quick (CC BY 2.0)

School data & stats

TypePublic

LocationAZ · West

SettingUrban

Undergrads64,674

Student:faculty18:1

Outcomes

4-yr grad rate55.6%

6-yr grad rate68%

Drop-out rate13.4%

Study abroad—

Cost

In-state tuition$12k

Out-of-state tuition$33k

Application fee—

Community

Racial diversity58.8%

Gender diversity48.6%

International8%

Identity—

Overview

Arizona State's Campus Immersion path is the university's flagship in-person experience, spread across several campuses in metro Phoenix — Tempe, Downtown Phoenix, West, and Polytechnic — and anchored by the large, historic Tempe campus. ASU has built its identity explicitly around innovation and access at enormous scale, positioning itself as a model for a "New American University" that combines big-university resources, research heft, and broad admission with room for students to carve out a more personal experience inside a very large institution.

Academics

Engineering (the Ira A. Fulton Schools), business (W. P. Carey), and journalism (the Cronkite School, known for its professional, working-newsroom teaching model) are widely recognized strengths, and sustainability is a defining institutional focus that runs across many programs through the School of Sustainability rather than sitting in a single department. Design, the arts, and a large, well-regarded computer science program round out the university's breadth. The Barrett Honors College gives high-achieving students a smaller, more selective cohort experience — its own dorms, seminars, and advising — layered inside the larger university.

Campus & student life

Tempe offers a lively, sprawling college-town environment adjacent to greater Phoenix, with warm-weather recreation, Tempe Town Lake, a large Greek and club scene, and Sun Devil athletics — especially football and a genuinely big-time basketball culture — drawing significant campus energy. The scale of the university means students can find nearly any niche community they want, from outdoor clubs to entrepreneurship groups to cultural organizations, though it also means a student has to seek that community out rather than have it handed to them by a small campus.

Getting in

ASU has emphasized access and enrollment growth explicitly as institutional strategy, making admission for the general university comparatively less filtered than its size and research reputation might suggest, with a formula that weighs coursework and grades heavily. Barrett Honors College, by contrast, maintains a distinctly more selective, holistic process — real essays, real curation — for students who opt in and want a smaller, more intensive experience.

After graduation

Business, engineering, and journalism graduates place strongly into Phoenix's growing tech and corporate sector — a real beneficiary of the metro area's semiconductor and technology investment boom — as well as into national employers and graduate programs. The university's alumni network is enormous and geographically concentrated in the Southwest, but its sheer size also gives it real reach into national industries like consulting, finance, and media.

Worth knowing

Barrett Honors College is a major differentiator, offering smaller seminars, dedicated housing, and closer faculty contact for students who want that experience within ASU's much larger ecosystem, and it's worth treating as a genuinely distinct admissions decision from the university at large. ASU's online degree programs, run through ASU Online, are also extensive and largely separate from the Campus Immersion experience described here, so students should be clear about which track they're applying to.

asu.edu ↗

Admissions

Acceptance rate89.9%

Enrolled mid-50%—

Test policynot used

Rec letters0

Deadlines (2026–27 cycle)

AdmissionRolling

Applying