SD School of Mines acceptance rate and your odds of getting in

SD School of Mines, a public university in South Dakota, reports a 80% acceptance rate and sits in the accessible band. In practice that means it admits most qualified applicants, so a strong application is judged against an applicant pool that is already self-selected.

Use this page to see what SD School of Mines weighs, where it ranks among South Dakota schools, and how a profile like yours is likely to land. Admitted students post a 75th-percentile SAT around 1120, a useful checkpoint for where your scores sit, though it is a reference range and not a cutoff.

What are my chances at SD School of Mines with a 3.1 GPA and a 1240 SAT?

About 98% (Safety), by CollegeCalcAI's deterministic model, for an applicant with a 3.1 unweighted GPA and a 1240 SAT, the middle of SD School of Mines's admitted range, applying Regular Decision without a hook. A 3.4 GPA with a 1340 SAT comes out near 98%. Courses, activities, essays and the application round move the number; the free calculator includes them.

Estimates, not guarantees. Get yours with your real courses and activities. Assistants and developers can fetch this table from the free API: /api/v1/colleges/sd-school-of-mines.

There is no formula that guarantees a spot at SD School of Mines, but the applicants who get in tend to do the same four things. Here is what the numbers say each one looks like.

SD School of Mines admitted 1,312 of the 1,539 students who applied for fall 2023, which works out to 85.3%. 496 enrolled. Roughly 38% of admitted students enrolled, a typical yield for a school in this range. SD School of Mines enrolls about 2,071 undergraduates in total, 21% of them women, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 12 to 1.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, IPEDS 2023 admissions and enrollment.

The middle 50% of admitted students at SD School of Mines scored between 1140 and 1340 on the SAT (average 1245). On the ACT the middle 50% runs from 24 to 30. A score above 1340 puts you in the top quarter of admits and turns the test into an asset; a score below 1140 puts you in the bottom quarter, where the rest of the application has to carry more weight. SD School of Mines is test-optional: scores are considered if you submit them but not required. Send a score at or above the middle of the admitted range; otherwise apply without one and let your transcript lead.

Source: College Scorecard (U.S. Department of Education), release 2026-06-10.

The factors that carry the most weight at SD School of Mines are rigor of secondary school record, academic GPA, and standardized test scores. Solid grades in a challenging schedule do most of the work here, with the rest of the application providing context. These ratings come from SD School of Mines's reported Common Data Set, so the full chart below reflects what the school itself says it values, not a generic guess.

SD School of Mines's published cost of attendance, before any aid, is roughly $25,385 per year. Tuition and fees are $10,500 for SD residents and $14,900 for out-of-state students, a $4,400 gap that makes residency the single biggest lever on cost. What families actually pay is different: the average net price after grants and scholarships is $20,183 a year, and it ranges from $15,348 for families earning under $30,000 to $21,993 for families earning over $110,000. 17% of undergraduates receive a federal Pell Grant.

Source: College Scorecard (U.S. Department of Education), release 2026-06-10. Net price is what students receiving aid paid after grants, by family income.

Ten years after enrolling, the median SD School of Mines student who received federal aid earns $72,257 a year, up from $62,863 at six years. 53% of first-time, full-time students graduate within six years, and 84% return for a second year. Among graduates who borrowed, median federal debt at graduation is $27,000; 40% of undergraduates take federal loans.

Source: College Scorecard (U.S. Department of Education), release 2026-06-10. Earnings cover students who received federal aid.

Among the 10 South Dakota schools we track, SD School of Mines ranks #4 most selective by acceptance rate. Schools like Mount Marty University (43%) and Augustana University (68%) sit nearby, which makes South Dakota a useful frame for calibrating a balanced list. As a public university, residency matters: in-state applicants generally see meaningfully better odds than the headline rate suggests.

Applicants targeting SD School of Mines often weigh Eastern Michigan University, Temple University, and UNC Charlotte, which sit at a similar level. Running the same profile against each one in the free calculator is the fastest way to see where you are a reach, a match, or a likely.

Acceptance rate, application counts, admitted test ranges, cost, and outcomes reflect publicly reported federal data (U.S. Department of Education: IPEDS 2023 and the College Scorecard) and each school's Common Data Set; figures are rounded and lag the current cycle by one to two years, so confirm deadlines and policies on the school's own site. The typical-admit GPA and SAT are CollegeCalcAI's modeled estimates. Estimates from CollegeCalcAI are a planning tool computed by a fixed, transparent model, not a guarantee of any admission decision.