Colby-Sawyer College

Private · Moderately Selective · NH

School data & stats

TypePrivate

LocationNH · Northeast

SettingRural

Undergrads771

Student:faculty10:1

Outcomes

4-yr grad rate14.5%

6-yr grad rate57.5%

Drop-out rate23.3%

Study abroad—

Cost

In-state tuition$19k

Out-of-state tuition$19k

Application fee—

Community

Racial diversity22.2%

Gender diversity69.3%

International1.8%

Identity—

Overview

Colby-Sawyer College is a small private college in New London, New Hampshire, in the Lake Sunapee region of the state's Upper Valley. It began as a women's junior college and became a coeducational four-year institution in the 1990s, keeping a small, close-knit character through that transition. The school pitches itself as career-preparatory within a liberal-arts frame, with health professions as its clearest identity.

Academics

Nursing is the anchor program, run in close partnership with the Dartmouth Health system for clinical placements and often for employment afterward. Other applied fields, including business, exercise and sport science, and biology, feed the same health-and-outdoors identity as the surrounding region. Class sizes are small across the board, and coursework leans hands-on rather than offering a large menu of specialized majors.

Campus & student life

The campus sits in a classic New England town near Lake Sunapee and the surrounding foothills, giving outdoor recreation - hiking, skiing, water sports - an everyday presence. Housing is primarily on-campus and residential, and the student body is small enough that most students know each other by name. Athletics and campus clubs fill much of the social calendar in a town with limited off-campus options.

Getting in

Colby-Sawyer's application is holistic rather than heavily numbers-driven, with real weight given to fit for a small, hands-on community.

After graduation

Nursing graduates have a fairly direct pipeline into Dartmouth Health and other regional hospital systems, and the college's applied programs generally emphasize direct workforce entry over graduate school.

Worth knowing

The Dartmouth Health partnership is the closest thing the college has to a signature feature, giving nursing students a clinical pipeline that is unusually well-connected for a school this size.

colby-sawyer.edu ↗

Admissions

Acceptance rate80.1%

Enrolled mid-50%—

Test policynot used

Rec letters0

Deadlines (2026–27 cycle)

AdmissionRolling

Applying