an associate degree in psychology is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #10 out of 38 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 9 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Psychology Associate Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,486 associate degrees in psychology to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Psychology School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of psychology for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality psychology 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 take this into account we consider a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their associate degree from the school. After all, your associate 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
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 psychology students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other psychology students want to attend this school to pursue a associate degree.
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 psychology students go into to obtain their associate 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 psychology related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for psychology students working on their associate degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Psychology Associate Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
Your choice of psychology for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality psychology program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
