Admissions & selectivity
Grinnell College Acceptance Rate & Admissions
What is the acceptance rate at Grinnell College?
Grinnell College’s reported acceptance rate is 14.5%.
- Acceptance rate · Fall 2024
- 14.5%
Source: College Scorecard · Fall 2024 admissions. Acceptance rates can change from year to year; this figure does not predict the current or next admission cycle.
Source: Grinnell College Common Data Set 2024-25, C1 · first-time, first-year students.
How to interpret the acceptance rate
Grinnell College admits 14.5% of applicants, a rate far below the median of 75.7% for comparable institutions (same type and size). In its 2024-25 Common Data Set, the university reported 9,758 applicants and 1,416 admitted students for the fall entering class.
What SAT and ACT scores do Grinnell College students report?
Among enrolled students who submitted scores, the middle 50% of SAT scores ranged from 1,410 to 1,540. For ACT submitters, the middle half fell between 31 and 34.
These ranges describe the enrolled students who provided scores, not a minimum for admission. An applicant can place their own results against the 1,410–1,540 SAT and 31–34 ACT bands as one point of context, not as a cutoff.
The ranges below describe enrolled students who submitted test scores at Grinnell College. Use them as academic context, then check the university’s current testing policy for your application cycle.
- Approximate lower endpoint
- 1410
- Approximate upper endpoint
- 1540
Enrolled students who submitted scores. This range is not an admission cutoff. The endpoints add section percentiles; they are not verified composite-score percentiles. A separate SAT-equivalent average is not plotted as a median. Source: College Scorecard; sum of section 25th/75th percentiles; enrolled score-submitters.
- 25th percentile
- 31
- 75th percentile
- 34
Enrolled students who submitted scores. This range is not an admission cutoff.
Figures cover fall 2024.
Who enrolls at Grinnell College?
- Pell Grant recipients
- 17.9%
- Entering students outside the first-time, full-time group
- 1.8%
- First-year retention
- 92.6%
Retention source: College Scorecard; full-time first-year retention.
About these student measures
The entering-student group includes part-time entrants as well as other attendance patterns.
Grinnell College enrolls 1,729 undergraduates. 17.9% receive Pell Grants, and an estimated 1.8% arrive as transfers or part-time students, so nearly every student enters as a first-year.
The composition is a small, predominantly first-year class with a modest share of federal grant recipients. A Pell-eligible applicant should know that the campus is built around the four-year residential experience, and the transfer route is narrow.
Students who start at Grinnell College tend to stay and finish. The first-year retention rate is 92.6%, and the six-year graduation rate is 88.1%.
Both figures run well above the peer medians of 74.2% and 54.9% for comparable institutions. Pell Grant recipients complete at 90.8%, which is 2.7 percentage points above the rate for the entering cohort as a whole.
An enrolled student can expect a campus where most classmates persist, and where the completion figures are strong across the board.
Data & methodology
Sources and reporting periods: methodology.
Analysis and methodology by Daniel Rogers, founder of College Azimuth.
Explanatory text is AI-assisted drafting checked against those figures; it is not an additional data source.
Admission rates describe past applicants, not an individual’s chance of admission; confirm requirements and deadlines with the institution.
Figure notes link to sources and limitations. About College Azimuth.