Ranked #19 in popularity, sociology is one of the most sought-after bachelor's degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 17 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Sociology Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 612 bachelor's degrees in sociology to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Sociology School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The sociology bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality sociology 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 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 school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 sociology students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other sociology students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
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 easy is it for sociology 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 sociology related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for sociology 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 Sociology Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
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It's difficult to beat Northwestern University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in sociology. Located in the city of Evanston, Northwestern is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the sociology degree program at Northwestern University get $3,281 above the standard college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
It is difficult to beat University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in sociology. UIUC is a fairly large public university located in the small city of Champaign.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the sociology program earn an average of $31,548 in their early career salary.
Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in sociology needs to take a look at University of Illinois at Chicago. Located in the large city of Chicago, UIC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the sociology program earn about $34,435 for their early 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).