Anthropology is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #59 most popular bachelor's degree program in the country. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 10 schools in Massachusetts to determine which ones were the best for anthropology students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 226 bachelor's degrees in anthropology to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Anthropology School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of anthropology for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality anthropology program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of various 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 anthropology students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of anthropology 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 anthropology 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 anthropology related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for anthropology students working on their bachelor's degree.
The anthropology school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Anthropology Bachelor's Degree Schools in Massachusetts.
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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Boston University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in anthropology. Located in the city of Boston, Boston U is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the anthropology program report average early career income of $26,934.
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in anthropology needs to check out Harvard University. Located in the city of Cambridge, Harvard is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.More information about a bachelor’s in anthropology from Harvard University
Brandeis University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in anthropology. Brandeis is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the city of Waltham.
Those anthropology students who get their bachelor's degree from Brandeis University earn $6,284 more than the typical anthropology grad.
Wellesley is a small private not-for-profit college located in the large suburb of Wellesley.
Anthropology bachelor's degree recipients from Wellesley College get an earnings boost of approximately $2,867 above the typical earnings of anthropology graduates.
Located in the large city of Boston, UMass Boston is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Anthropology bachelor's degree recipients from University of Massachusetts - Boston receive an earnings boost of approximately $7,459 over the typical income of anthropology graduates.
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).
Your choice of anthropology for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality anthropology program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
