If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in international relations & national security, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #58 in the country in terms of popularity. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 13 schools in California to determine which ones were the best for international relations & national security students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 736 bachelor's degrees in international relations & national security during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great International Relations & National Security School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of international relations & national security 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 good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a college'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 many resources a school devotes to international relations & national security students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of international relations & national security 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 international relations & national security 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 international relations & national security related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for international relations & national security 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 International Relations & National Security Bachelor's Degree Schools in California 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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Stanford University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in international relations & national security. Located in the suburb of Stanford, Stanford is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.
Those international relations & national security students who get their bachelor's degree from Stanford University earn $32,723 more than the typical international relations student.
University of Southern California is a wonderful decision for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in international relations & national security. Located in the large city of Los Angeles, USC is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Those international relations & national security students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Southern California receive $8,819 more than the average international relations grad.
University of California - Davis is a wonderful choice for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in international relations & national security. UC Davis is a fairly large public university located in the small suburb of Davis.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the international relations program earn about $34,949 for their early career.
Located in the city of San Diego, USD is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.
International Relations & National Security bachelor's degree recipients from University of San Diego receive an earnings boost of about $7,505 above the typical earnings of international relations & national security majors.
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 international relations & national security 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:
