If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in physics, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #62 in the country in terms of popularity. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual looked at 3 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Physics Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 326 bachelor's degrees in physics to qualified students.
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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 colleges 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 Illinois list to help you make the college decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "physical-sciences//physics"
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a wonderful decision for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in physics. Located in the city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduation, physics bachelor's recipients generally earn an average of $51,019 at the beginning of their careers.
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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
_main_lecture_hall_1972.jpg){kind=link}