Non-Professional General Legal Studies is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #102 most popular bachelor's degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 6 schools in the Far Western US Region to determine which ones were the best for non-professional general legal studies students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 555 bachelor's degrees in non-professional general legal studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Legal Studies (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Legal Studies (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Criminal Justice & Law Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Criminal Justice & Law Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Legal Services & Studies (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Legal Services & Studies (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Legal Services (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Legal Services (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Paralegal (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Paralegal (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 1
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 1 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 1
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 1 offers with relevance >= 1.0
Choosing a Great Non-Professional General Legal Studies School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of non-professional general legal 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
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.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on non-professional general legal studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other non-professional general legal studies 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 non-professional general legal 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 non-professional general legal studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for non-professional general legal studies students working on their bachelor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Non-Professional General Legal Studies Schools
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Non-Professional General Legal Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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 = "legal-studies-and-professions//general-legal-studies"
It's hard to beat University of California - Berkeley if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in non-professional general legal studies. UC Berkeley is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized city of Berkeley.
Those non-professional general legal studies students who get their bachelor's degree from University of California - Berkeley earn $2,097 more than the standard non-professional general legal studies student.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in non-professional general legal studies has to check out University of Washington - Seattle Campus. Located in the large city of Seattle, UW Seattle is a public university with a very large student population.
Soon after graduation, non-professional general legal studies bachelor's recipients generally earn an average of $39,558 in their early careers.
University of California - Santa Cruz is a good decision for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in non-professional general legal studies. UC Santa Cruz is a large public university located in the city of Santa Cruz.
After graduating, non-professional general legal studies bachelor's recipients typically earn an average of $36,941 in the first five years of their career.
University of La Verne is a wonderful decision for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in non-professional general legal studies. Located in the large suburb of La Verne, ULV is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.
Those non-professional general legal studies students who get their bachelor's degree from University of La Verne make $7,215 more than the average non-professional general legal studies graduate.
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).