Religious Studies is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #72 most popular bachelor's degree program in the country. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 5 schools in the Far Western US Region to determine which ones were the best for religious studies students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 323 bachelor's degrees in religious studies to qualified students.
DEBUG: offers_url is valid, proceeding to fetch data
DEBUG: No offers_data.offers found, showing generic ESYOH widget
Choosing a Great Religious Studies School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of religious 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to religious studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of religious studies students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
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 easy is it for religious studies 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 religious studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for religious studies 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 Religious Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "philosophy-and-religious-studies//religious-studies"
It is difficult to beat University of California - Santa Barbara if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in religious studies. Located in the medium-sized suburb of Santa Barbara, UCSB is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the religion program report average early career wages of $19,911.
It is difficult to beat California Baptist University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in religious studies. Located in the city of Riverside, Cal Baptist is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Religious Studies bachelor's degree recipients from California Baptist University receive an earnings boost of about $4,418 over the typical earnings of religious studies majors.
Located in the city of Tacoma, Faith is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.
Those religious studies students who get their bachelor's degree from Faith International University receive $16,939 more than the standard religion student.
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 religious 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
