Ranked #4 in popularity, general biology is one of the most sought-after bachelor's degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 14 schools in Kentucky to determine which ones were the best for general biology students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 1,009 bachelor's degrees in general biology to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Grad Cert - Biotechnology (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Grad Cert - Biotechnology (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 0
DEBUG: No relevant offers, showing generic ESYOH widget
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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 account for this we include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best General Biology Bachelor's Degree Schools in Kentucky list to help you make the college decision.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "biological-biomedical-sciences//general-biology"
It's difficult to beat University of Kentucky if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in general biology. Located in the large city of Lexington, UK is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the general biology major at University of Kentucky earn $3,238 more than the standard graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
University of Louisville is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in general biology. UofL is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Louisville.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the biology program earn an average of $27,123 in the first couple years of working.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in general biology needs to take a look at Western Kentucky University. WKU is a large public university located in the small city of Bowling Green.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the biology program state that they receive average early career wages of $29,945.
Located in the suburb of Highland Heights, NKU is a public university with a large student population.
General Biology bachelor's degree recipients from Northern Kentucky University earn a boost of about $10,848 over the average earnings of general biology graduates.
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.