Illinois Wesleyan University

Admission to Illinois Wesleyan University has become moderately selective, though its drawing power among accepted students remains comparatively limited. In the 2025 admissions cycle, the university accepted 39.3% of its applicants, placing its acceptance rate higher than 46% of peer private liberal arts colleges. While the institution turns away a substantial majority of applicants, relatively few of those who receive an offer ultimately decide to attend. The university recorded a yield rate of 12.3% in 2025, which is higher than only 10% of peer schools and indicates that most admitted applicants enroll elsewhere. In institutional evaluations, the college was placed 80th in 2020 and 89th in 2022 in the US News ranking of National Liberal Arts Colleges. For prospective students, these metrics show that while gaining acceptance requires a competitive profile, the college faces strong competition from other institutions when enrolling its admitted cohort.

Prospective applicants to Illinois Wesleyan University typically present competitive secondary school records alongside standardized test scores that place around the middle of college-bound students nationally. For the enrolled class of 2025, the median SAT score was 1240, which is higher than 14% of peer private liberal arts colleges. Middle-50% ACT composite scores ranged between 25 and 30, showing consistent academic grounding across reading, English, and mathematics disciplines. High school academic performance carries significant weight in admissions decisions; for the entering class of 2023-2024, a quarter of freshmen arrived with a top high school grade point average, and the broad majority earned mostly A and B grades in college-preparatory coursework. Test score submission has declined noticeably in recent years, with only a minority of applicants presenting standardized test results. Successful candidates generally combine solid grades in rigorous subjects with scores reflecting steady preparation.

Degrees at Illinois Wesleyan University are concentrated primarily in pre-professional tracks and scientific disciplines. In 2025, the university awarded 347 bachelor's degrees and offered no graduate programs. Student conferrals show moderate concentration, with the top three bachelor's majors making up 32.9% of all graduating seniors. The single largest discipline was Business/Commerce, General, producing 43 graduates, followed closely by Registered Nursing and General Biology. Although undergraduate nursing was ranked 195th by US News for 2027, the university's largest majors do not hold top national rankings. Post-graduation earnings data from 2023 reveal that healthcare and financial fields provide the strongest initial compensation for alumni. Graduates in registered nursing led all fields with median first-year earnings of $80,143, while accounting and finance majors also achieved solid starting salaries. International students make up only a tiny share of degree recipients, with nearly all graduates in the biggest programs being domestic students.

The undergraduate community at Illinois Wesleyan University is structured around traditional full-time study without graduate enrollment. Most undergraduates enter directly as freshmen, with transfer students making up only a small fraction of the campus. White students form the clear majority across all class years, followed by Hispanic and Black students. In the incoming first-year cohort for 2025, Asian students numbered 22, representing 4.8% of entering students, with similar shares observed among upper-level undergraduates. International enrollment remains modest, with 18 international students entering in the 2025 freshman class, accounting for 3.9% of that group. Gender representation is fairly balanced across campus, with women slightly outnumbering men in the incoming class and men holding a slight majority among continuing students. Overall, these figures outline an undergraduate population centered on domestic students, where students of Asian and international backgrounds form compact campus communities.

Illinois Wesleyan University serves an exclusively traditional college-age student population, with no graduate programs on campus. In 2025, undergraduates aged 20 to 21 constituted the largest single demographic group, accounting for 46.4% of the student body. Students aged 18 to 19 made up 45.5% of enrollment, while older undergraduates aged 22 to 24 accounted for just 6.2%. Because virtually all students fall within the standard undergraduate age bracket of 18 to 21, campus life is organized around conventional residential and daytime academic programming. There is essentially no non-traditional adult or continuing education presence. This concentration creates a uniform student peer group where extracurricular activities, campus housing, and student services cater directly to emerging adults pursuing continuous four-year degrees.

International enrollment at Illinois Wesleyan University has trended downward over the past decade, remaining limited in scope. Because the institution does not offer graduate education, all international students are enrolled at the undergraduate level. In 2025, international students comprised 5.2% of the undergraduate student body, a share that is higher than 29% of peer private liberal arts colleges. Among degree recipients in 2025, international students earned 3.5% of all bachelor's degrees conferred. These international graduates were concentrated in select academic areas rather than dispersed across the curriculum. General biology recorded the highest proportion, with international students making up 9.7% of graduates in that major, while finance and accounting also graduated small numbers of international students. By contrast, the university's largest undergraduate programs, including general business and nursing, graduated no international students that year. For overseas applicants, these patterns suggest an environment with a small international cohort focused primarily in the natural sciences and business-related quantitative disciplines.

Families exploring Illinois Wesleyan University can consider several alternative collegiate options across central Illinois. Just 1.4 kilometers away sits Illinois State University, a large public research institution ranked 219th among National Universities for 2027. Located 35.8 kilometers to the northwest, Bradley University is a private institution holding the 169th spot on the National Universities list. Further east at a distance of 48.2 kilometers, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign offers extensive research programs and is ranked 34th nationally. For applicants committed to smaller liberal arts environments, Knox College is situated 78.8 kilometers west and stands at 85th among National Liberal Arts Colleges.

Campus safety records at Illinois Wesleyan University reflect incidents primarily related to student conduct violations rather than violent crime. The university recorded a crime rate of 12.6 per 1,000 students in 2025, reflecting a modest decrease from earlier years. From 2023 to 2025, the overwhelming majority of recorded campus incidents involved disciplinary actions for substance use. Specifically, the university documented 119 disciplinary referrals for liquor law violations and 20 disciplinary referrals for drug law violations during that three-year span. Reported criminal offenses occurred with much lower frequency across those same years, including 8 reported incidents of rape, alongside a small number of fondling cases and property offenses such as vehicle theft. These figures show that daily campus safety concerns are centered largely on alcohol and substance policy enforcement within the student body, while serious criminal offenses remain infrequent across university grounds.