General Biology is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #4 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 57 schools in Pennsylvania to determine which ones were the best for general biology students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 3,884 bachelor's degrees in general biology during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great General Biology School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The biology bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality biology program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their bachelor's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their bachelor's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to general biology students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other general biology students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How easy is it for general biology to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized general biology related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for general biology students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best General Biology Bachelor's Degree Schools in Pennsylvania list, to help you choose the best school for you.
In addition to College Factual's rankings, you may want to take a look at College Combat, our unique tool that lets you pit your favorite schools head-to-head and compare how they rate on factors that most interest you.
When you have some time, check it out - you may want to bookmark the link so you don't forget it.
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ADBLOCK #171
Best Schools for Bachelor’s Students to Study General Biology in Pennsylvania
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in general biology. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
11 Top Pennsylvania Schools for a Bachelor's in Biology
University of Pennsylvania is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in general biology. UPenn is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Philadelphia.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the biology program report average early career wages of $31,055.
It is difficult to beat University of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh Campus if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in general biology. Pitt is a very large public university located in the large city of Pittsburgh.
Soon after graduating, biology bachelor's recipients usually make about $33,576 in the first five years of their career.
It's hard to beat Temple University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in general biology. Temple is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Philadelphia.
Soon after graduation, biology bachelor's recipients usually make around $35,101 in their early careers.
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in general biology has to take a look at Drexel University. Drexel is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Philadelphia.
General Biology bachelor's degree recipients from Drexel University receive an earnings boost of approximately $2,788 over the average earnings of general biology graduates.
Lehigh is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the city of Bethlehem.
Bachelor's recipients from the general biology major at Lehigh University get $10,784 above the standard college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Located in the large suburb of Swarthmore, Swarthmore is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the general biology degree program at Swarthmore College make $6,211 more than the typical college graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
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Honorable Mentions
These are some additional schools worth mentioning that are also great but just didn't quite make the cut to earn our top Best General Biology Bachelor's Degree Schools in Pennsylvania award.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
The biology bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality biology program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
