a bachelor's degree in area studies is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #85 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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 12 schools in the New England Region to determine which ones were the best for area studies students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 637 bachelor's degrees in area studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Explore societal similarities and differences as seen through cultural, biological, archaeological and linguistic lenses when you earn one of your degrees in anthropology from Southern New Hampshire University.
Choosing a Great Area Studies School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of area studies for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a host of different 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 many resources a school devotes to area studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of area studies 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 much debt area studies 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 area studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for area studies 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 Area Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in the New England 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.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "ethnic-cultural-gender-studies//area-studies"
Explore societal similarities and differences as seen through cultural, biological, archaeological and linguistic lenses when you earn one of your degrees in anthropology from Southern New Hampshire University.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in area studies has to take a look at Dartmouth College. Located in the town of Hanover, Dartmouth is a private not-for-profit college with a moderately-sized student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the area studies major at Dartmouth College get $4,957 above the typical college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in area studies needs to take a look at Brown University. Brown is a large private not-for-profit university located in the medium-sized city of Providence.
After graduating, area studies bachelor's recipients usually make around $39,165 at the beginning of their careers.
It is difficult to beat Wellesley College if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in area studies. Wellesley is a small private not-for-profit college located in the suburb of Wellesley.
Soon after graduation, area studies bachelor's recipients typically make around $43,231 in their early careers.
Yale University is a good choice for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in area studies. Yale is a large private not-for-profit university located in the medium-sized city of New Haven.
Those area studies students who get their bachelor's degree from Yale University earn $12,010 more than the typical area studies grad.
Amherst is a small private not-for-profit college located in the city of Amherst.
Area Studies bachelor's degree recipients from Amherst College get an earnings boost of approximately $5,541 over the typical income of area studies 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 area studies for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
