a bachelor's degree in physics is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #62 out of 363 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 11 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Physics Bachelor's Degree Schools in the New England Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 743 bachelor's degrees in physics during the 2022-2023 academic year.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 0
DEBUG: No relevant offers, showing generic ESYOH widget
Choosing a Great Physics School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The physics bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality physics program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 physics students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other physics 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 physics 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 physics related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for physics students working on their bachelor's 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 Physics Bachelor's Degree Schools in the New England Region list to help you make the college decision.
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 = "physical-sciences//physics"
Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a wonderful decision for students interested in a bachelor's degree in physics. Located in the medium-sized city of Cambridge, MIT is a private not-for-profit school with a large student population.
Those physics students who get their bachelor's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology receive $15,498 more than the standard physics graduate.
Northeastern University is a great decision for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in physics. Northeastern is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Boston.
Bachelor's recipients from the physics degree program at Northeastern University get $10,124 more than the standard college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
Located in the large suburb of Lowell, UMass Lowell is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the physics major at University of Massachusetts - Lowell get $9,049 above the standard college graduate 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).
The physics bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality physics program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
_main_lecture_hall_1972.jpg){kind=link}