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 reviewed 13 schools in the Plains States Region to determine which ones were the best for bachelor's degree seekers in the field of physics. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 477 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. 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 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.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Physics Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that 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.
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Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in physics needs to look into University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. Located in the large city of Minneapolis, UMN Twin Cities is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the physics major at University of Minnesota - Twin Cities make $3,340 above the typical graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
University of Nebraska - Lincoln is a wonderful option for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in physics. UNL is a very large public university located in the city of Lincoln.
After graduating, physics bachelor's recipients usually earn around $47,670 in their early 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:
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