an associate degree in health/medical prep programs is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #49 out of 328 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 5 schools in the Plains States Region to determine which ones were the best for health/medical prep programs students pursuing a associate degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 165 associate degrees in health/medical prep programs during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Health/Medical Prep Programs School for Your Associate Degree
The medical prep associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality medical prep program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To take this into account 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.
Average Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of associate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their associate degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
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 health/medical prep programs students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of health/medical prep programs students who choose to seek a associate 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 health/medical prep programs to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized health/medical prep programs related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for health/medical prep programs students working on their associate 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 Health/Medical Prep Programs Associate Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Northeast Community College is one of the finest schools in the country for getting an associate degree in health/medical prep programs. Located in the remote town of Norfolk, Northeast is a public college with a moderately-sized student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the medical prep program report average early career income of $32,840.
Three Rivers College is a good option for individuals pursuing an associate degree in health/medical prep programs. Three Rivers College is a small public college located in the town of Poplar Bluff.
Associate graduates who receive their degree from the medical prep program earn about $30,736 in the first couple years of their career.
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 medical prep associate degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality medical prep program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
