If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in international studies, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #69 in the country in terms of popularity. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 10 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best International Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 718 bachelor's degrees in international studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great International Studies School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of international studies for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality international studies 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
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we include a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their bachelor's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their bachelor's 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 much a school focuses on international studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of international 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 international 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 international studies related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for international 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 International Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
In addition to College Factual's rankings, you may want to take a look at College Combat, our unique tool that lets you pit your favorite schools head-to-head and compare how they rate on factors that most interest you.
When you have some time, check it out - you may want to bookmark the link so you don't forget it.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "multi-interdisciplinary-studies//international-studies"
Earn the degree that can help you drive business beyond borders with a specialized online international business degree from Southern New Hampshire University.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in international studies needs to look into University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame is a large private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Notre Dame.
Those international studies students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Notre Dame make $31,879 more than the typical international studies graduate.
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in international studies. Located in the medium-sized city of Ann Arbor, U-M is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those international studies students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Michigan - Ann Arbor make $6,963 more than the standard international studies student.
It's hard to beat Michigan State University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in international studies. Michigan State is a very large public university located in the city of East Lansing.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the international studies program state that they receive average early career earnings of $38,410.
University of Wisconsin - Madison is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in international studies. UW - Madison is a fairly large public university located in the city of Madison.
Bachelor's recipients from the international studies program at University of Wisconsin - Madison make $3,111 above the average college graduate 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.
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 international studies for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality international studies program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
