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.
College Factual looked at 17 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Physics Bachelor's Degree Schools in California ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,140 bachelor's degrees in physics during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 complete 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 California 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.
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University of California - San Diego is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in physics. UCSD is a very large public university located in the large city of La Jolla.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the physics program earn around $48,951 for their early career.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in physics has to look into University of California - Berkeley. UC Berkeley is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Berkeley.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the physics program make an average of $50,219 for their early career.
University of California - Irvine is a good decision for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in physics. UC Irvine is a very large public university located in the large city of Irvine.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the physics program state that they receive average early career wages of $43,144.
University of California - Santa Barbara is a great decision for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in physics. Located in the medium-sized suburb of Santa Barbara, UCSB is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the physics major at University of California - Santa Barbara get $5,099 more than the average college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Located in the city of Los Angeles, UCLA is a public university with a very large student population.
Those physics students who get their bachelor's degree from University of California - Los Angeles earn $11,997 more than the standard physics 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).
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.
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