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 6 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Geography & Cartography Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 198 bachelor's degrees in geography & cartography during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Geography & Cartography School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The geography 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 many resources a school devotes to geography & cartography students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other geography & cartography students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
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 geography & cartography 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 geography & cartography related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for geography & cartography 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 Geography & Cartography Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list to help you make the college 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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University of Minnesota - Twin Cities is a great decision for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in geography & cartography. Located in the large city of Minneapolis, UMN Twin Cities is a public university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the geography program state that they receive average early career earnings of $38,019.
It is hard to beat University of Missouri - Columbia if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in geography & cartography. Mizzou is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized city of Columbia.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the geography program state that they receive average early career income of $38,726.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in geography & cartography needs to take a look at Park University. Located in the suburb of Parkville, Park University is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Those geography & cartography students who get their bachelor's degree from Park University earn $16,836 more than the standard geography graduate.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in geography & cartography has to check out Minnesota State University - Mankato. Located in the city of Mankato, Minnesota State Mankato is a public university with a large student population.
Soon after graduating, geography bachelor's recipients usually earn an average of $40,553 in the first five 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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
The geography 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:
