Operations Research isn't the most popular bachelor's program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #206 in popularity out of 363 majors in the country. So, it might take a little more work to find colleges and universities that offer the degree program.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Operations Research Bachelor's Degree Schools ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 445 bachelor's degrees in operations research to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Operations Research School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The operations research bachelor's 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 bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
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 operations research students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other operations research 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 operations research 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 operations research related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for operations research 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 Operations Research Bachelor's Degree Schools list to help you make the college decision.
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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Cornell University is a great decision for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in operations research. Located in the small city of Ithaca, Cornell is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Operations Research bachelor's degree recipients from Cornell University earn a boost of around $9,342 over the average income of operations research graduates.
Columbia University in the City of New York is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in operations research. Columbia is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of New York.
Bachelor's recipients from the operations research program at Columbia University in the City of New York get $23,422 more than the standard college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in operations research has to look into University of California - Berkeley. Located in the midsize city of Berkeley, UC Berkeley is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduating, operations research bachelor's recipients typically make around $88,685 at the beginning of their careers.
It's difficult to beat Southern Methodist University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in operations research. SMU is a large private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Dallas.
After graduating, operations research bachelor's recipients generally make around $72,658 in their early careers.
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.
The operations research bachelor's 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.
