Anxiety and stress have become an increasingly common experience for many college students. With countless tests to take, papers to write, coveted internships to land, and a mountain of debt slowly piling up for many, it can be difficult for undergraduate students to enjoy their college experience. We took a look at student happiness for Mental Health Awareness Month and found that it varies dramatically between schools — and the most competitive schools often don’t have the happiest students.
- Overall, just 7% of college students say they’re “extremely” happy, while 30% are “very” happy, 41% are “moderately” happy, 17% are “slightly” happy, and 5% are “not at all” happy
- 54% of University of Arkansas students are “extremely” or “very happy,” making it the happiest school we measured
- Students who say their school has “poor” mental health services are 2X as likely to be “not at all” happy
The University of Arkansas and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology top the list of happiest colleges, with 54 and 53 percent of students saying they’re “extremely” or “very” happy respectively. Harvard and Yale are the only Ivy League schools at the top of the list, with 49 and 45 percent of students saying the same. On the other end of the spectrum, California State University Channel Islands and the State University of New York at Oswego rank as the least happy campuses.
The 11 Happiest Colleges
Percent of students who are “extremely” or “very” happy
Results are based on interviews with 46,561 students at colleges and universities that are part of the College Pulse American Undergraduate Student Panel. To be included in the ranking, a school had to have at least 100 student respondents participate, and 150 schools met this criteria.
The survey not only found substantial differences in student happiness between schools, but also between men and women and students of different sexual orientations. Using College Pulse Insights — our predictive intelligence and statistical analysis platform — to correlate this survey’s questions with the more than 15,000 variables in our database, we found, in general, male students are happier than female students. 9 percent of men say they’re “extremely” happy and 32 percent say they’re “very” happy, compared to 6 and 29 percent of women. More straight students than LGBTQIA+ students say they’re “extremely” or “very” happy (40 percent vs. 27 percent).
Our Insights platform also uncovered that students who say their school has “poor” mental health services are two times as likely to be “not at all” happy, and schools that rank high in terms of happiness rank towards the top or the middle in terms of mental health services.
To see where your school stacks up and to see full results, sign up for College Pulse Insights.
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Methodology: This survey was designed and conducted by College Pulse. Interviews were conducted among a sample of 46,561 full-time and part-time students attending four-year colleges or universities in the U.S. who are part of College Pulse’s American College Student Panel. To reduce the effects of any non-response bias, a post-stratification adjustment was applied based on demographic distributions from the 2017 Current Population Survey (CPS). The post- stratification weight rebalanced the sample based on the following benchmarks: age, race and ethnicity, and gender. The sample weighting was accomplished using an iterative proportional fitting (IFP) process that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables. Weights were trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results.
About College Pulse: College Pulse is a leading online survey and analytics company dedicated to understanding the attitudes, preferences, and behaviors of today’s college students. College Pulse offers custom data-driven marketing and research solutions, utilizing its unique American College Student Panel and online analytics platform which provides insight to brands, companies, and organizations. College Pulse’s platform includes 240,000 undergraduate college student respondents from more than 800 four-year colleges and universities in all 50 states.
