If you pursue a bachelor's degree in general biology, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #4 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 16 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best General Biology Bachelor's Degree Schools in Tennessee ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,344 bachelor's degrees in general biology to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great General Biology School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of general biology for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on general biology students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of general biology students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt general biology students go into to obtain their bachelor's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized general biology related body.
Our complete 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 picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best General Biology Bachelor's Degree Schools in Tennessee ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
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The University of Tennessee - Knoxville is a great option for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in general biology. Located in the city of Knoxville, UT Knoxville is a public university with a fairly large student population.
After graduating, biology bachelor's recipients usually earn an average of $27,487 in the first five years of their career.
It's hard to beat Rhodes College if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in general biology. Rhodes College is a small private not-for-profit college located in the large city of Memphis.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the biology program state that they receive average early career income of $28,901.
Middle Tennessee State University is a fairly large public university located in the city of Murfreesboro.
General Biology bachelor's degree recipients from Middle Tennessee State University receive an earnings boost of around $8,372 over the average earnings of general biology graduates.
Located in the midsize city of Chattanooga, UT Chattanooga is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the general biology program at The University of Tennessee - Chattanooga get $2,029 more than the typical graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
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.