Ranked #24 in popularity, social work 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 24 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Social Work Bachelor's Degree Schools in New York ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 941 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
Your choice of social work for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality social work 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 quality 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 host 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 social work students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of social work 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 easy is it for social work 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 social work related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for social work students working on their bachelor's degree.
The social work 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 Work Bachelor's Degree Schools in New York.
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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Any student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in social work has to look into New York University. NYU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of New York.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the social work program state that they receive average early career earnings of $26,837.
It's difficult to beat Syracuse University if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in social work. Located in the midsize city of Syracuse, Syracuse is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.More information about a bachelor’s in social work from Syracuse University
Located in the large city of Bronx, Lehman is a public college with a large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the social work program at Lehman College make $5,651 more than the average college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
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 social work for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality social work program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
