Happy Pride! College can be a great place to explore and develop your identity. Creating a supportive and diverse environment for groups such as the LGBTQ+ community creates a safe community that allows for students to succeed. 

Entering college and pursuing a higher education can often be a stressful and challenging time especially for those moving away from their homes. It’s essential that each student joins a college campus that fosters a safe, inclusive and empowering environment that they learn and grow to reach their full potential and beyond. For LGBTQ+ students, this is particularly essential as they face unique challenges, such as discrimination, isolation or lack of representation. A supportive campus with inclusive policies, accessible resource centers, and student organizations can help cultivate a welcoming and inclusive community that can help students, no matter their identity, thrive. 

We've curated a list of 30 great schools in the United States that you can explore, based on some excellent sources (Campus Pride Index, Movement Advancement Project, Genny Beemyn), enhanced with our own research.  

Here’s a breakdown of the criteria we used to select the most supportive campuses for LGBTQ+ students in the US.

All schools on this list earned five stars, a full score, on the Campus Pride Index. Schools are rated through eight, equally weighted LGBTQ-friendly factors– LGBTQ+ policy inclusion, support and institutional commitment, academic life, student life, housing, campus safety, counseling and health, and recruitment and retention efforts. 

The 30 schools also include gender identity and expression in their “No Discrimination” policies, offer the SafeZone Program for ally training and creating safe space, and have robust hate crime and bias incident reporting systems. 

There are some limitations to this list as we focus on schools represented on the Campus Pride Index, a database that does not have comprehensive coverage of every college in the US. Additionally, we focused on explicit institutional non-discriminatory and inclusive policies, which does not cover the campus atmosphere. Be sure to check out the colleges’ sites for full details and the latest updates on the school policies.  

• LGBTQ+ Policy Robustness of College Location: The Map Awareness Project gives a numerical score to all the states through assigning a value to 50 general policies and positive points are given for a state that implements each policy on the list. Points are subtracted for harmful or discriminatory policies. The states’ points are calculated and the states are ranked and grouped into the five groups High, Medium, Fair, Poor, and Negative.
• Gender Inclusive Restrooms: Gender neutral bathrooms that allow for students of all gender expressions to utilize may be essential for those who feel uncomfortable in labeled bathrooms or are exploring their identity and many others. We tracked which of these schools have gender inclusive bathrooms on their campus.
• Gender-Inclusive Housing: Gender inclusive housing allows for individuals to live together no matter their assigned sex,gender, or gender expression. We tracked which schools allow for students to opt-into gender inclusive housing
• Academic Offerings: Most colleges offer LGBTQ+ study courses and some colleges allow students to minor, major and/or complete a certificate for LGBTQ+ studies.
• LGBTQ+ Scholarships: Some colleges offer scholarships to their LGBTQ+ identifying students and for those who are exceptional leaders or advocates for the LGBTQ+ community.
• Notes: We have also included some highlights specific to each institution’s LGBTQ+ centers, policies or other resources

Author

Yifan Li is a graduate from The Harker School's Class of 2025 and will be attending Cornell University this fall.

 

Thirty Highly LGBTQ+ Inclusive Campuses

College Kickstart LLC