If you pursue a bachelor's degree in public health, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #28 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 9 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Public Health Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 426 bachelor's degrees in public health during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Public Health School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of public health 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on public health students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other public health students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt public health 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 public health related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for public health students working on their bachelor's degree.
The public health school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Public Health Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois.
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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It's hard to beat University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in public health. Located in the city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the public health program make about $40,564 in their early career salary.
Northwestern University is a great decision for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in public health. Northwestern is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Evanston.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the public health program report average early career income of $39,956.
It's hard to beat University of Illinois at Chicago if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in public health. UIC is a very large public university located in the city of Chicago.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the public health program state that they receive average early career wages of $41,585.
Located in the medium-sized suburb of Normal, Illinois State is a public university with a very large student population.
Public Health bachelor's degree recipients from Illinois State University earn a boost of about $18,021 over the typical income of public health 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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
Your choice of public health 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
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