Physical Sciences is about average in terms of popularity for bachelor's degrees programs. That is, it ranks #18 out of the 38 majors across the country that we analyze each year. So, you may have to do some digging around to find quality schools that offer the degree program. This list can help with that.
College Factual reviewed 42 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for bachelor's degree seekers in the field of physical sciences. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 4,059 bachelor's degrees in physical sciences during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Physical Sciences School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The physical sciences bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality physical sciences 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 much a school focuses on physical sciences students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other physical 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 much debt physical sciences students go into to obtain their bachelor's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized physical sciences related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for physical sciences students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Physical Sciences Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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.
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).