a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #51 out of 363 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 16 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Chemical Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 975 bachelor's degrees in chemical engineering to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Chemical Engineering School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of chemical engineering for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality chem eng 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 quality 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 chemical engineering students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of chemical engineering students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
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 chemical engineering 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 chemical engineering related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for chemical engineering students working on their bachelor's degree.
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 Chemical Engineering Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list to help you make the college decision.
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 is hard to beat University of California - Berkeley if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. Located in the midsize city of Berkeley, UC Berkeley is a public university with a very large student population.
Those chemical engineering students who get their bachelor's degree from University of California - Berkeley earn $13,638 more than the average chem eng student.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering has to check out University of California - Davis. UC Davis is a fairly large public university located in the small suburb of Davis.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the chem eng program make around $68,337 in their early career salary.
It's difficult to beat University of California - San Diego if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. Located in the city of La Jolla, UCSD is a public university with a very large student population.
Soon after graduating, chem eng bachelor's recipients typically earn about $59,508 in their early careers.
UCLA is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Los Angeles.
Bachelor's recipients from the chemical engineering degree program at University of California - Los Angeles earn $8,765 above the average graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Located in the city of Corvallis, Oregon State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the chemical engineering program at Oregon State University make $3,703 above the standard college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
UCSB is a fairly large public university located in the midsize suburb of Santa Barbara.
Chemical Engineering bachelor's degree recipients from University of California - Santa Barbara receive an earnings boost of about $11,822 above the typical income of chemical engineering 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 chemical engineering for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality chem eng program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
