The Hardman Rankings

← World University Rankings 2026

South Dakota State University

United StatesROR 015jmes13
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World University Rankings 2026 · 90% range 624–1932 of 2,287 · score 32.8
Research Index: not ranked

How it scores

Research
38
Alumni outcomes
90
Admissions & earnings
143/243

Research and Alumni outcomes are percentiles among 2,287 universities; alumni outcomes are counted per student. Admissions & earnings is the position among universities in the same country (United States).

Note: It has 944 core papers, below the Research Index threshold of 1,500, so its citation shares are shrunk toward the median of similarly small universities before scoring.

Admissions, outcomes and alumni

Admit rate
98.3% src
Average SAT
1,120 src
Yield (admits who enrol)
39% src
Median earnings 10 years after entry
$55,070 src
40-year return on investment (Georgetown CEW)
$1.81M src
Graduation rate (6 years)
62% src
Internationally notable alumni (Wikidata)
6 src
Heads of state or government (Wikidata)
0 src
Founders, billionaires and $30M+ alumni
not on the published top lists; estimated
Students (undergraduate headcount / total FTE, IPEDS)
9,198 / 9,355 src

Each figure links to its source. Admissions and earnings figures are comparable only within a country.

Research Index

The Research Index ranks a university only when it has at least 1,500 fractionally counted core publications over four years, so that a handful of highly cited papers can’t produce an extreme score. Its field ranks (where it has 200 or more papers in a field) and all of its data are shown here.

The numbers behind it (2020–2023)

Papers in the top 10% of their field
8.3% (6.8%–9.7%)
Papers in the top 1% of their field
0.9% (0.5%–1.5%)
Top-10% papers (fractional count)
78
All papers (fractional count)
944.1
International co-authored
34.8%
Open access
65.4%
Papers from 2020–23 since retracted
0 (0.00 per 1,000)

Core publications, fractional counting, field-normalised citation shares. Brackets show Leiden’s stability interval. Collaboration and open-access shares use full counting and aren’t field-normalised. Retraction counts come from the Retraction Watch database and include publishers’ mass retractions as well as honest-error retractions; a retraction is not by itself evidence of misconduct, and the count is never scored.

By field

Biomedical & health sciences=1369range 1158–1523 of 1,671
Life & earth sciences=703range 529–866 of 1,092
Mathematics & computer science–fewer than 200 papers
Physical sciences & engineering–fewer than 200 papers
Social sciences & humanities–fewer than 200 papers

Position over time

Not enough periods to show a trend.

The same method applied to each 4-year publication window. The number of ranked universities grows from period to period, so position is shown as a share of the field.

How other rankings place it

–Research Index 2026 (not ranked)
–QS 2027 (not in top 100)
–THE 2027 (not in top 100)
–ARWU 2026 (not in top 100)

Other rankings are cited for comparison. The Research Index measures research only; QS and THE also use reputation surveys and figures universities submit, and ARWU counts prize winners and total output.

Prize winners

Alumni laureates
1
Staff laureates
0

Alumni: 1 Nobel. Most recent: Theodore Schultz (Nobel Economics, 1979). Counted from Wikidata (CC0). Alumni laureates count toward the overall ranking per student (10 of 65 global weight points); staff laureates are shown for context only.