Ranked #15 in popularity, economics is one of the most sought-after bachelor's degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 45 schools in the New England Region to determine which ones were the best for economics students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 4,864 bachelor's degrees in economics to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Economics School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of economics for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality economics 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 good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection 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 economics students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other economics 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 economics 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 economics related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for economics 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 Economics Bachelor's Degree Schools in the New England Region 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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It's hard to beat Harvard University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in economics. Located in the medium-sized city of Cambridge, Harvard is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Economics bachelor's degree recipients from Harvard University get an earnings boost of approximately $42,389 above the average earnings of economics graduates.
Brown University is a good decision for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in economics. Brown is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the midsize city of Providence.
Those economics students who get their bachelor's degree from Brown University make $10,460 more than the standard economics student.
It's difficult to beat Dartmouth College if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in economics. Located in the remote town of Hanover, Dartmouth is a private not-for-profit college with a moderately-sized student population.
Those economics students who get their bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College receive $33,071 more than the standard economics student.
Boston College is a good option for individuals interested in a bachelor's degree in economics. Located in the city of Chestnut Hill, Boston College is a private not-for-profit college with a large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the economics major at Boston College earn $10,495 above the typical college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Located in the city of Boston, Northeastern is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the economics major at Northeastern University make $8,927 above the standard college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Williams is a small private not-for-profit college located in the fringe town of Williamstown.
Bachelor's recipients from the economics major at Williams College get $19,284 above the average college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
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Honorable Mentions
These are some additional schools worth mentioning that are also great but just didn't quite make the cut to earn our top Best Economics Bachelor's Degree Schools in the New England Region award.
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 economics for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality economics program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
