Forestry isn't the most popular bachelor's program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #157 in popularity out of 363 majors in the country. So, you may have to do some digging around to find quality schools that offer the degree program. This list can help with that.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Forestry Bachelor's Degree Schools in California ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 112 bachelor's degrees in forestry to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Forestry School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The forestry bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality forestry program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a host of various 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 forestry students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other forestry students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
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 forestry to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized forestry related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for forestry students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Forestry Bachelor's Degree Schools in California 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.
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California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in forestry. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is a fairly large public university located in the small suburb of San Luis Obispo.
Soon after graduation, forestry bachelor's recipients usually make an average of $55,092 in their early careers.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in forestry needs to check out Humboldt State University. Located in the remote town of Arcata, Humboldt State University is a public university with a moderately-sized student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the forestry program report average early career earnings of $52,810.
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
The forestry bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality forestry program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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