2025 College Rankings

Texas A&M University is the largest public university in Texas, established in 1876 as a land-grant institution with an emphasis on military training. Indeed, the military has left a deep mark on Texas A&M—we rank it first among schools that we studied for its ROTC program—even as the school has adapted to other educational demands. The school has benefited from recent state mandates requiring it to strip back its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy. No job postings at Texas A&M require DEI statements, and the DEI bureaucracy itself is much diminished, with fewer than one employee for every 1,000 students. Texas A&M maintains institutional neutrality, a sound policy that keeps its administration from pursuing more aggressive forms of activism that would hamper the school’s mission. Texas A&M stayed out of the Students for Fair Admissions case at the Supreme Court, while many other college administrations weighed in with their support of affirmative action. The process has not been all smooth sailing: in 2025, Texas A&M and the governor’s office became embroiled in a dispute over whether the school was doing its due diligence in eliminating all DEI programs.

Students at Texas A&M tend to be politically tolerant, no matter their beliefs. Controversial left-wing and right-wing speakers are welcome to speak on campus, and the great majority of students believe that attempting to de-platform a speaker is unacceptable. According to data collected by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), 71 percent of students believe it “rarely” or “never” acceptable to shout down a speaker, 81 percent believe the same of blocking students from attending a campus speech, and 87 percent deplore the use of violence to stop a speech. That tolerance is perhaps buttressed by the prevalence of the school’s Corps of Cadets, the largest and most prestigious leadership training program at a public university, which seeks to develop military and civilian leaders through a rigorous regime that emphasizes discipline, honor, and service.

Faculty at Texas A&M lean left but do not appear extreme to their students. On an ideological continuum ranging from 1 to 7, where 1 is “very liberal” and 7 is “very conservative,” students typically mark their professors as a 4.2—well within the “moderate” range. On the other hand, almost all faculty campaign donations in the 2023–24 election cycle went to Democratic or liberal causes, and very few faculty belong to extracurricular organizations that encourage free inquiry on campus.

Texas A&M’s curriculum has room for improvement. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gives the school a C in its What Will They Learn? ratings, which assign letter grades based on how many of seven core subjects are required in the core curriculum or general education program. The school, as a result of Texas state curriculum mandates, requires that its students take courses focusing on history and government to graduate. It does not mandate that students do the same for DEI-centric or other activist-inflected courses.

Texas A&M often results in great outcomes for its graduates: we rank the school fifth overall in this category. Graduation and retention rates are significantly higher than their predicted results, based on SAT scores and Pell Grants received by entrants. The Princeton Review places the school’s alumni network in its top 20 nationwide for public schools. It typically takes students about 2.2 years to pay back the cost of their education, a little better than average. The median salary of graduates tends to overperform expectations ten years after initial enrollment by over $10,000.