Health & Physical Education is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #9 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 16 schools in Virginia to determine which ones were the best for health & physical education students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,305 bachelor's degrees in health & physical education during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Health & Physical Education School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The phys ed bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a college'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 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 health & physical education students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other health & physical education 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 health & physical education 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 health & physical education related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for health & physical education students working on their bachelor's degree.
The phys ed 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 Health & Physical Education Bachelor's Degree Schools in Virginia.
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.
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Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in health & physical education needs to look into James Madison University. Located in the city of Harrisonburg, JMU is a public university with a very large student population.
Those health & physical education students who get their bachelor's degree from James Madison University earn $4,493 more than the typical phys ed grad.
George Mason University is a wonderful choice for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in health & physical education. Located in the suburb of Fairfax, GMU is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Health & Physical Education bachelor's degree recipients from George Mason University receive an earnings boost of approximately $3,428 over the typical income of health & physical education graduates.
It is hard to beat Liberty University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in health & physical education. Liberty University is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the small city of Lynchburg.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the phys ed program earn an average of $27,423 in their early career salary.
William & Mary is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in health & physical education. William & Mary is a medium-sized public school located in the suburb of Williamsburg.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the phys ed program make around $27,114 for their early 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.