Immaculata University, about 40 minutes outside of Philadelphia, balances a liberal arts core curriculum with career-focused programs aimed at evolving with employers’ needs.
The most popular bachelor’s degrees include nursing, business management, exercise science, education and criminology. One of Immaculata’s growing disciplines is cybersecurity; the university launched a bachelor’s degree program in the field in 2020. (Students can also minor in it.) And one of the newest programs is a minor in social media and digital creation, designed to train students on branding and audience engagement.
Immaculata students work on a community service project during their new-student orientation, the first of several available volunteer experiences. In the past year, for example, IU students mentored local elementary students, gardened and then donated the resulting produce to a local food bank and helped build homes on a service trip to North Carolina.
All full-time undergraduate students at Immaculata get a scholarship from the college, ranging from $5,500 to the full cost of tuition. And as the Catholic university likes to boast, tuition today is about the same as it was back in 2011. Money estimates that Immaculata’s six-year graduation rate (70%) is about 13% higher than predicted based on the demographics of its student body.
