Geography & Cartography is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #86 most popular bachelor's degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 18 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Geography & Cartography Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 487 bachelor's degrees in geography & cartography to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Geography & Cartography School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of geography & cartography for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality geography program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 account for this 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.
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 geography & cartography students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of geography & cartography 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 geography & cartography 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 geography & cartography related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for geography & cartography students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Geography & Cartography Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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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Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in geography & cartography needs to look into University of Wisconsin - Madison. UW - Madison is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Madison.
Geography & Cartography bachelor's degree recipients from University of Wisconsin - Madison receive an earnings boost of approximately $6,039 above the average earnings of geography & cartography majors.
It's hard to beat Ohio State University - Main Campus if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in geography & cartography. Located in the large city of Columbus, Ohio State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those geography & cartography students who get their bachelor's degree from Ohio State University - Main Campus make $7,831 more than the standard geography student.
It is hard to beat University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in geography & cartography. UIUC is a very large public university located in the city of Champaign.
Bachelor's recipients from the geography & cartography major at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign earn $5,256 more than the average graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
UW - Eau Claire is a moderately-sized public university located in the small city of Eau Claire.
Geography & Cartography bachelor's degree recipients from University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire get an earnings boost of about $3,090 above the typical income of geography & cartography 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 geography & cartography for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality geography program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
