If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in child development & psychology, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #37 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 14 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Child Development & Psychology Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 5,343 bachelor's degrees in child development & psychology during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Child Development & Psychology School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The child development bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a host of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to child development & psychology students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of child development & psychology students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How much debt child development & psychology 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 child development & psychology related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for child development & psychology students working on their bachelor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Child Development & Psychology Schools
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Child Development & Psychology Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that 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 - Irvine is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in child development & psychology. Located in the large city of Irvine, UC Irvine is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the child development program make an average of $29,830 in the first couple years of working.
University of Washington - Seattle Campus is a great option for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in child development & psychology. UW Seattle is a very large public university located in the large city of Seattle.
Child Development & Psychology bachelor's degree recipients from University of Washington - Seattle Campus earn a boost of approximately $4,445 above the average income of child development & psychology majors.
University of California - Santa Barbara is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in child development & psychology. UCSB is a very large public university located in the midsize suburb of Santa Barbara.
Bachelor's recipients from the child development & psychology degree program at University of California - Santa Barbara earn $4,161 above the standard college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
University of California - Davis is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in child development & psychology. UC Davis is a very large public university located in the small suburb of Davis.
Child Development & Psychology bachelor's degree recipients from University of California - Davis receive an earnings boost of around $2,031 over the average earnings of child development & psychology graduates.
Located in the midsize city of Berkeley, UC Berkeley is a public university with a very large student population.
Those child development & psychology students who get their bachelor's degree from University of California - Berkeley receive $4,180 more than the standard child development grad.
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.
The child development bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
