If you plan on getting your associate degree in social sciences, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #7 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
College Factual reviewed 4 schools in the Southwest Region to determine which ones were the best for associate degree seekers in the field of social sciences. Combined, these schools handed out 1,404 associate degrees in social sciences to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Social Sciences School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of social sciences for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality social sciences program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a associate degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. 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.
Early-Career Earnings
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their associate degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. That is, everyone wants their associate degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 social sciences students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other social sciences students want to attend this school to pursue a associate 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 social sciences to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized social sciences related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for social sciences students working on their associate degree.
The social sciences school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Social Sciences Associate Degree Schools in the Southwest Region.
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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
Your choice of social sciences for getting your associate degree school matters. Important measures of a quality social sciences program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
