an associate degree in computer science is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #35 out of 328 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
College Factual looked at 11 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Computer Science Associate Degree Schools in New York ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 622 associate degrees in computer science during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Computer Science School for Your Associate Degree
The compsci associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality compsci 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 associate degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. 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.
Early-Career Earnings
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their associate degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. That is, everyone wants their associate degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to computer science students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of computer science students who choose to seek a associate 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 easy is it for computer science to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized computer science related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for computer science students working on their associate degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Computer Science Associate Degree Schools in New York ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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It's hard to beat LaGuardia Community College if you wish to pursue an associate degree in computer science. Located in the city of Long Island City, LaGuardia is a public college with a large student population.
Associate students who receive their degree from the compsci program make an average of $24,888 in their early career salary.
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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
The compsci associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality compsci program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
