Culinary Arts is of the hottest associate degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #23 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 16 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Culinary Arts Associate Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,331 associate degrees in culinary arts during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Culinary Arts School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of culinary arts for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality culinary arts 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
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. 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
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of associate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their associate 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 culinary arts students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other culinary arts students want to attend this school to pursue a associate 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 culinary arts to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized culinary arts related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for culinary arts students working on their associate 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 Culinary Arts Associate Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Any student who is interested in an associate degree in culinary arts has to take a look at Culinary Institute of America. The Culinary Institute of America is a small private not-for-profit school located in the large suburb of Hyde Park.
After graduation, culinary arts associate recipients typically earn around $28,049 at the beginning of their careers.
Niagara County Community College is a wonderful choice for individuals interested in an associate degree in culinary arts. Located in the rural area of Sanborn, Niagara County Community College is a public college with a small student population.
Soon after graduating, culinary arts associate recipients usually make about $26,514 at the beginning of their careers.
Delaware Technical Community College - Terry is one of the best schools in the country for getting an associate degree in culinary arts. Located in the small city of Dover, Delaware Tech is a public college with a large student population.
Students who graduate with their associate from the culinary arts program report average early career income of $26,031.
Atlantic Cape Community College is one of the finest schools in the country for getting an associate degree in culinary arts. Located in the rural area of Mays Landing, Atlantic Cape Community College is a public college with a small student population.
Associate recipients from the culinary arts major at Atlantic Cape Community College make $5,363 above the typical college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Pittsburgh Technical College is a fairly small private not-for-profit college located in the suburb of Oakdale.
Those culinary arts students who get their associate degree from Pittsburgh Technical College make $2,747 more than the standard culinary arts student.
Montco is a moderately-sized public college located in the large suburb of Blue Bell.
Associate recipients from the culinary arts major at Montgomery County Community College get $5,487 above the standard college grad 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).