Ranked #8 in popularity, accounting is one of the most sought-after bachelor's degree programs in the nation. 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 30 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Accounting Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,749 bachelor's degrees in accounting during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a good 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.
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
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 complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for accounting 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 Accounting Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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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It's difficult to beat University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in accounting. UIUC is a very large public university located in the small city of Champaign.
Bachelor's recipients from the accounting major at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign make $18,173 above the standard college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
DePaul University is a great decision for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in accounting. DePaul is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Chicago.
Those accounting students who get their bachelor's degree from DePaul University receive $12,692 more than the typical accounting grad.
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in accounting needs to take a look at Loyola University Chicago. Loyola Chicago is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Chicago.
Accounting bachelor's degree recipients from Loyola University Chicago earn a boost of about $13,407 above the average earnings of accounting graduates.
It is difficult to beat Illinois State University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in accounting. Illinois State is a very large public university located in the suburb of Normal.
Accounting bachelor's degree recipients from Illinois State University get an earnings boost of around $6,382 above the typical income of accounting graduates.
Located in the city of Chicago, UIC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Accounting bachelor's degree recipients from University of Illinois at Chicago get an earnings boost of approximately $9,122 over the typical income of accounting majors.
Located in the city of Rock Island, Augustana is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the accounting major at Augustana College earn $5,591 more than the standard college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Illinois Wesleyan is a small private not-for-profit university located in the city of Bloomington.
Accounting bachelor's degree recipients from Illinois Wesleyan University get an earnings boost of about $14,273 above the average income of accounting majors.
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).