If you pursue a bachelor's degree in economics, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #15 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 42 schools in New York to determine which ones were the best for economics students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 4,110 bachelor's degrees in economics during the 2022-2023 academic year.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Economics (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Economics (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Economics (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Economics (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Applied Economics" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MS in Applied Economics" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 3
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 2 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 2
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 2 offers with relevance >= 1.0
Choosing a Great Economics School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The economics 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. 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 make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor's 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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on economics students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of economics students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How easy is it for economics to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized economics related body.
Our complete 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.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Economics Bachelor's Degree Schools in New York ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "social-sciences//economics"
Columbia University in the City of New York is a good option for students interested in a bachelor's degree in economics. Located in the city of New York, Columbia is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Economics bachelor's degree recipients from Columbia University in the City of New York receive an earnings boost of around $29,578 above the typical earnings of economics graduates.
Cornell University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in economics. Cornell is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Ithaca.
Those economics students who get their bachelor's degree from Cornell University make $31,410 more than the average economics graduate.
Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in economics needs to take a look at New York University. Located in the city of New York, NYU is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Those economics students who get their bachelor's degree from New York University make $14,938 more than the average economics student.
Barnard College is a great decision for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in economics. Located in the large city of New York, Barnard is a private not-for-profit college with a small student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the economics degree program at Barnard College earn $32,303 more than the average college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
Colgate is a small private not-for-profit university located in the rural area of Hamilton.
Economics bachelor's degree recipients from Colgate University get an earnings boost of about $23,717 over the average earnings of economics 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).