Cooper Union

Retention and Graduation Rates

89% of our fall 2024 first-year students returned in fall 2025.

82% of our first-year students that entered in fall 2019 graduated within 6 years (our first-year retention rates do not include students currently on approved leave-of-absence, e.g. military, medical, etc.).

To learn more about our students: please download our viewbook, watch this video, register for a campus tour, attend an info session, and sign up for our mailing list.

Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.
“My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”
From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.
Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.