If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in geological & earth sciences, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #80 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 22 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Geological & Earth Sciences Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 863 bachelor's degrees in geological & earth sciences to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Geological & Earth Sciences School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of geological & earth sciences 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 much a school focuses on geological & earth sciences students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other geological & earth sciences students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
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 geological & earth sciences 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 geological & earth sciences related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for geological & earth sciences students working on their bachelor's degree.
The geology 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 Geological & Earth Sciences Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region.
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.
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It is hard to beat University of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh Campus if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in geological & earth sciences. Located in the large city of Pittsburgh, Pitt is a public university with a very large student population.
After graduating, geology bachelor's recipients typically earn about $38,652 in the first five years of their career.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in geological & earth sciences has to look into Columbia University in the City of New York. Located in the large city of New York, Columbia is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduating, geology bachelor's recipients typically earn an average of $34,658 at the beginning of their careers.
Rutgers New Brunswick is a fairly large public university located in the city of New Brunswick.
Bachelor's recipients from the geological & earth sciences program at Rutgers University - New Brunswick earn $6,818 more than the standard college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
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).