Computer Software & Applications is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #54 most popular associate degree program in the country. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 44 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for computer software & applications students pursuing a associate degree. Combined, these schools handed out 2,107 associate degrees in computer software & applications to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Computer Software & Applications School for Your Associate Degree
The computer software associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 software & applications students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other computer software & applications students want to attend this school to pursue a associate degree.
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 software & applications 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 software & applications related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for computer software & applications students working on their associate degree.
More Ways to Rank Computer Software & Applications Schools
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Computer Software & Applications Associate Degree Schools list to help you make the college decision.
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Learn the applied programming skills needed to fill in-demand tech roles when you earn your online AS in Computer Science at Southern New Hampshire University.
Every student pursuing a degree in an associate degree in computer software & applications has to look into Madison Area Technical College. Located in the city of Madison, Madison College is a public college with a fairly large student population.
Computer Software & Applications associate degree recipients from Madison Area Technical College earn a boost of about $33,550 over the average earnings of computer software & applications 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 computer software associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
