Accounting is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #8 most popular major in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
College Factual reviewed 43 schools in the Far Western US Region to determine which ones were the best for bachelor's degree seekers in the field of accounting. Combined, these schools handed out 2,646 bachelor's degrees in accounting to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Accounting School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The accounting bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality accounting 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 take this into account we include a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a host 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 much a school focuses on accounting students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other accounting 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 accounting 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 accounting related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for accounting 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 Accounting Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that 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.
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It's hard to beat Santa Clara University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in accounting. SCU is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the medium-sized city of Santa Clara.
Those accounting students who get their bachelor's degree from Santa Clara University earn $18,410 more than the standard accounting student.
Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in accounting has to look into University of Washington - Seattle Campus. UW Seattle is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Seattle.
Accounting bachelor's degree recipients from University of Washington - Seattle Campus earn a boost of about $2,724 above the average earnings of accounting majors.
Seattle University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in accounting. Located in the large city of Seattle, Seattle U is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the accounting major at Seattle University get $10,563 more than the average college graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
Loyola Marymount University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in accounting. Located in the large city of Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the accounting major at Loyola Marymount University get $10,953 above the standard college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
Located in the city of San Diego, USD is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the accounting degree program at University of San Diego earn $9,233 more than the standard college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Located in the large suburb of Moraga, SMC is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the accounting major at Saint Mary's College of California make $6,621 more than the average college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
Gonzaga is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the medium-sized city of Spokane.
Bachelor's recipients from the accounting major at Gonzaga University get $9,433 above the average graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
CSUN is a fairly large public university located in the city of Northridge.
Bachelor's recipients from the accounting degree program at California State University - Northridge earn $8,897 more than the average college graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Located in the medium-sized city of Orange, Chapman is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Accounting bachelor's degree recipients from Chapman University receive an earnings boost of around $10,355 above the typical income of accounting 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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
The accounting bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality accounting program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
