If you pursue a bachelor's degree in computer science, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #16 most popular program in the country. 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 21 schools in Illinois to determine which ones were the best for computer science students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,957 bachelor's degrees in computer science during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Computer Science School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of computer science for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. 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
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.
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
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 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 computer science 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 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 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 Computer Science Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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 is difficult to beat University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in computer science. Located in the small city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those computer science students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign receive $53,176 more than the average compsci graduate.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in computer science needs to check out Northwestern University. Northwestern is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the small city of Evanston.
Computer Science bachelor's degree recipients from Northwestern University get an earnings boost of about $28,627 above the typical income of computer science graduates.
University of Illinois at Chicago is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in computer science. UIC is a very large public university located in the large city of Chicago.
Computer Science bachelor's degree recipients from University of Illinois at Chicago earn a boost of around $6,686 above the average income of computer science graduates.
It's difficult to beat Illinois Institute of Technology if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in computer science. Located in the city of Chicago, Illinois Tech is a private not-for-profit school with a medium-sized student population.
Computer Science bachelor's degree recipients from Illinois Institute of Technology earn a boost of around $14,651 over the typical income of computer science majors.
Located in the midsize suburb of Normal, Illinois State is a public university with a very large student population.
Computer Science bachelor's degree recipients from Illinois State University earn a boost of about $10,009 above the average earnings of computer science majors.
NIU is a fairly large public university located in the small suburb of Dekalb.
Bachelor's recipients from the computer science major at Northern Illinois University get $5,903 above the average college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
Located in the suburb of Edwardsville, SIUE is a public university with a large student population.
Computer Science bachelor's degree recipients from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville earn a boost of about $4,752 above the typical earnings of computer science 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).
Your choice of computer science for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. 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.
