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 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Operations Research Bachelor's Degree Schools in New York ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 137 bachelor's degrees in operations research during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 in New York 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 good option for individuals 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.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the operations research program earn about $96,377 in their early career salary.
Columbia University in the City of New York is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in operations research. Columbia is a fairly 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 make $7,040 above the average college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
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.
