If you pursue a bachelor's degree in social work, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #24 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
College Factual reviewed 9 schools in New Jersey to determine which ones were the best for bachelor's degree seekers in the field of social work. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 493 bachelor's degrees in social work during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Social Work School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The social work 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 social work students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other social work 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 much debt social work 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 social work related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for social work 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 Social Work Bachelor's Degree Schools in New Jersey 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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Rutgers University - New Brunswick is a great decision for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in social work. Rutgers New Brunswick is a very large public university located in the city of New Brunswick.
Soon after graduating, social work bachelor's recipients typically earn an average of $39,936 in their early careers.
Rutgers University - Newark is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in social work. Located in the city of Newark, Rutgers Newark is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduating, social work bachelor's recipients typically make around $39,936 in their early careers.
Montclair State University is a great decision for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in social work. Montclair State is a fairly large public university located in the suburb of Montclair.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the social work program make around $33,095 for their early career.
Rutgers University - Camden is a wonderful option for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in social work. Rutgers Camden is a medium-sized public university located in the small city of Camden.
After graduating, social work bachelor's recipients typically make about $39,936 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).