If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in criminology, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #53 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 9 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Criminology Bachelor's Degree Schools in New York ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 530 bachelor's degrees in criminology to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Criminology School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of criminology for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. 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 account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination 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 criminology students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other criminology students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's 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 criminology 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 criminology related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for criminology students working on their bachelor's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Criminology Bachelor's Degree Schools in New York list to help you make the college 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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Niagara University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in criminology. Located in the large suburb of Niagara University, Niagara is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the criminology program make around $36,781 for their early career.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice is a great choice for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in criminology. John Jay is a large public college located in the city of New York.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the criminology program make around $33,798 for their early career.
SUNY Cortland is a good option for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in criminology. Located in the town of Cortland, SUNY Cortland is a public school with a moderately-sized student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the criminology program earn about $34,768 in the first couple years of their career.
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.
by our College Data Analytics Team
Your choice of criminology for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. 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.
