Computer Software & Applications is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #89 most popular bachelor's degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 8 schools in the Far Western US Region to determine which ones were the best for computer software & applications students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 519 bachelor's degrees in computer software & applications to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Computer Software & Applications School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of computer software & applications for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality computer software 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 take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection 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 computer software & applications students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other computer software & applications 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 much debt computer software & applications 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 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 bachelor's degree.
The computer software school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Computer Software & Applications Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region.
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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Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in computer software & applications has to take a look at University of Southern California. Located in the large city of Los Angeles, USC is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Those computer software & applications students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Southern California earn $46,744 more than the typical computer software grad.
It is hard to beat Academy of Art University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in computer software & applications. Academy of Art University is a medium-sized private for-profit university located in the large city of San Francisco.
After graduating, computer software bachelor's recipients usually make about $45,387 in the first five years of their career.
Digipen is a small private for-profit school located in the small city of Redmond.
Those computer software & applications students who get their bachelor's degree from DigiPen Institute of Technology earn $25,558 more than the standard computer software grad.
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 software & applications for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality computer software program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
