a bachelor's degree in general social sciences is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #67 out of 363 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 76 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best General Social Sciences Bachelor's Degree Schools ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 5,605 bachelor's degrees in general social sciences during the <nil> academic year.
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Choosing a Great General Social Sciences School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of general social sciences 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on general social sciences students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of general social sciences 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 general social sciences 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 general social sciences related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general social sciences 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 General Social Sciences Bachelor's Degree Schools 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.
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ADBLOCK #171
Best Schools for Bachelor’s Students to Study General Social Sciences in the United States
Explore the top ranked colleges and universities for general social sciences students seeking a a bachelor's degree. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
15 Top Schools for a Bachelor's in Social Sciences
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in general social sciences needs to look into Vanderbilt University. Located in the city of Nashville, Vanderbilt is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Those general social sciences students who get their bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University receive $22,880 more than the average social sciences graduate.
Located in the medium-sized city of Cambridge, Harvard is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
General Social Sciences bachelor's degree recipients from Harvard University get an earnings boost of around $18,031 over the typical income of general social sciences majors.
Michigan State is a very large public university located in the city of East Lansing.
General Social Sciences bachelor's degree recipients from Michigan State University earn a boost of about $7,697 above the average earnings of general social sciences graduates.
NYU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of New York.
General Social Sciences bachelor's degree recipients from New York University receive an earnings boost of approximately $10,507 above the typical income of general social sciences majors.
UW Seattle is a very large public university located in the large city of Seattle.
General Social Sciences bachelor's degree recipients from University of Washington - Seattle Campus get an earnings boost of around $19,029 over the typical earnings of general social sciences graduates.
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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 General Social Sciences Bachelor's Degree Schools 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 general social sciences 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
