Pacific Lutheran University Overview

Pacific Lutheran University is a private not-for-profit institution situated in Tacoma, Washington. PLU is located in a safe and convenient suburb.

What Is Pacific Lutheran University Known For?

• The 1% student loan default rate at PLU is better than the national rate of 10.1%. That's a good sign that you may be able to pay off student loans easier than your peers at other schools can.
• The doctor's degree is the highest award offered at PLU.
• In <nil>, 67% of the faculty were full-time.
• Students who graduate from PLU with a bachelor's degree make about $60,932 a year. That's 49% more than those who graduate from other schools.
• On average, it takes about 4.2 years for students from PLU to earn a bachelor's degree. This is excellent when compared to the average of 4.4 years.

Where Is Pacific Lutheran University?

Contact details for PLU are given below.

	Contact Details
Address:	12180 Park Ave South, Tacoma, WA 98447-0003
Phone:	253-535-8145
Website:	www.plu.edu

How Do I Get Into PLU?

You can apply to PLU online at: www.plu.edu/admission/first-year/

Admission Requirements for PLU

Submission	Required?
High School GPA	Required
High School Rank	Considered but not required
High School Transcript	Required
College Prep Program	Recommended
Recommendations	Required
SAT or ACT Scores	Considered but not required
TOEFL	Neither required nor recommended

How Hard Is It To Get Into PLU?

With an acceptance rate of 88%, PLU is fairly easy to get into, but you must be sure to submit the required materials.

Approximately 39% of accepted students are men and 61% are women. The acceptance rate for men is 85%, and the acceptance rate for women is 90%.

Average Test Scores

About 11% of students accepted to PLU submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 570 and 693. Math scores were between 580 and 683.

PLU received ACT scores from 6% of accepted students. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, ACT English scores ranged between 21 and 28. Math scores were between 21 and 27. Composite scores were between 22 and 28.

Can I Afford Pacific Lutheran University?

The overall average net price of PLU is $34,271. The affordability of the school largely depends on your financial need since net price varies by income group.

The net price is calculated by adding tuition, room, board and other costs and subtracting financial aid.

Student Loan Debt

Almost 66% of college students who graduated with the class of 2018 took out student loans, but that percentage varies from school to school. At PLU, approximately 47% of students took out student loans averaging $6,921 a year. That adds up to $27,684 over four years for those students.

The student loan default rate at PLU is 0.9%. This is significantly lower than the national default rate of 10.1%, which is a good sign that you'll be able to pay back your student loans.

Pacific Lutheran University Undergraduate Student Diversity

There are 2,373 undergraduate students at PLU, with 2,279 being full-time and 94 being part-time.

There are also 333 graduate students at the school.

Gender Diversity

Of the 2,279 full-time undergraduates at PLU, 36% are male and 64% are female.

Racial-Ethnic Diversity

The racial-ethnic breakdown of Pacific Lutheran University students is as follows.

Race/Ethnicity	Number of Grads
Asian	253
Black or African American	77
Hispanic or Latino	366
White	1,217
International Students	26
Other Races/Ethnicities	340

Geographic Diversity

Washington students aren't the only ones who study at Pacific Lutheran University. At this time, 24 states are represented by the student population at the school.

Over 26 countries are represented at PLU. The most popular countries sending students to the school are Norway, China, and Vietnam.

Online Learning at Pacific Lutheran University

In 2020-2021, 128 students took at least one online class at the school.

The following chart shows how the online learning population at PLU has changed over the last few years.

References

*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.

• College Factual
• National Center for Education Statistics
• Image Credit: By Joe Mabel under License

More about our data sources and methodologies.