As we celebrate 35 years of the Colorado College plan, we'd like to share 35 facts about Colorado College.
To read more about the Colorado College plan and its 35th anniversary, visit this page.
- Colorado College is the only top-ranked private, liberal arts college of its kind within 1,000 miles and is consistently ranked in the top tier in U.S. News & World Report rankings.
- The college is located on a 90-acre campus on the north end of historic downtown Colorado Springs at the base of 14,110-foot-high Pikes Peak, an hour south of Denver.
- The population of the Colorado Springs metropolitan area now exceeds 500,000. There is an average of 250 days of sunshine, 14.8 inches of precipitation, and 42.7 inches of snowfall each year.
- This year CC is celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Block Plan, in which students take one course at a time, doing the equivalent of a semester’s work in intensive 3˝-week blocks.
- For the 2005-06 academic year, the college had a student to faculty ratio of 9 to 1
- The average class size at CC is about 13. Classes normally have a 25-student limit and 25 percent of the classes have eight or fewer students.
- 72 percent of the class of 2004 had an independent study experience while at CC and independent studies are taken by freshmen through seniors.
- The college offers 36 disciplinary and six interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts majors as well as a Master of Arts in Teaching degree.
- The most popular undergraduate majors at CC are biology, English, visual arts, and sociology.
- Twenty majors require students to complete a senior thesis or project.
- Nearly 50 percent of our students participate in research outside course requirements.
- In addition to block classes, many CC students take enrichment courses in music, dance, drama, and art.
- For 2005-06, over 90 percent of our faculty members have achieved the highest degrees in their fields.
- CC has approximately 1,950 undergraduate students, representing all 50 states and 28 foreign countries; 21 percent come from Colorado; 19 percent are students of color; 53 percent are women and 47 percent are men.
- For its class of 2010, CC admitted just 34 percent of its applicants.
- 25 percent of all admitted students for the class of 2010 are valedictorians or ranked in the top 1 percent of their high school class. Nearly three-quarters were ranked in the top 10 percent.
- Median SAT score for admitted students in 2006 was 2020 (out of 2400) and the median ACT composite was 30 (out of 36).
- 75.2 percent of students live on campus. Among the many residential life options at Colorado College are theme houses — ecology, racial and cultural diversity, interfaith, civic engagement, foreign language — and apartment-style living.
- For the 2006-07 academic year, annual tuition at the college is $32,128; sixty percent of CC students receive some sort of financial aid for a total of $30 million, with $19.8 million of that contributed by CC per year.
- One quarter of our students come from families with incomes under $50,000, a significantly higher percentage than most liberal arts colleges.
- Tuition covers only about 60 percent of the total cost of educating a student, with donations and payouts from the college's endowment — valued at nearly $427 million as of June 30, 2004 — making up the difference.
- 84 percent of Colorado College students are involved in community service compared to the national average of 36 percent — and students are especially interested in being involved in programs to clean up the environment.
- Nearly 60 percent of students study abroad at some point in their CC careers.
- The college is host to 80 student organizations and 27 religious life groups.
- CC has 17 Division III varsity programs and two Division I sports — men’s hockey and women’s soccer; 25 percent of students participate in varsity sports; 78 percent play intramurals.
- 15 percent of CC students belong to one of three sororities or three fraternities.
- CC students are entitled to take a free summer session course at any time before they graduate. More than 60 percent of the class of 2004 had done so, and two thirds of those had taken more than one course.
- Colorado College students and alumni have received 66 Watson Fellowships; 12 Rhodes Scholarships; 14 Fulbright Fellowships; and one Nobel Prize. Eighteen have made Olympic teams earning a total of nine medals.
- Currently, there are 20 CC alumni serving with the Peace Corps; historically, 285 alumni have served, ranking CC among top colleges sending alumni on to this international service organization.
- One year after completion of their bachelor’s degrees, 18 percent of CC graduates report being in graduate school full-time.
- Numerous graduates serve in elected office, including a current member in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives.
- CC is a wireless campus.
- The college’s mountain cabin, 35 minutes to the west, and its more extensive Baca Campus, about three hours to the southwest, allow classes to explore and better understand the importance of this region to the United States.
- Colorado College held the territory’s first college classes on May 6, 1874 — two years before Colorado became a state — and the first group of enrolled students included 12 women and 13 men.
- Though CC is the only college of its kind to use the Block Plan, others have adopted the system that we created. Among them, Cornell College, Tusculum College, and University of Montana-Western, along with several university graduate programs.