If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in film, video & photographic arts, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #42 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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 24 schools in New York to determine which ones were the best for film, video & photographic arts students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 1,765 bachelor's degrees in film, video & photographic arts to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Film, Video & Photographic Arts School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of film, video & photographic arts for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality film 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
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.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to film, video & photographic arts students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of film, video & photographic arts students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
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 film, video & photographic arts 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 film, video & photographic arts related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for film, video & photographic arts students working on their bachelor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Film, Video & Photographic Arts Schools
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 Film, Video & Photographic Arts Bachelor's Degree Schools in New York list to help you make the college 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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Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in film, video & photographic arts needs to check out New York University. Located in the city of New York, NYU is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the film program report average early career earnings of $23,869.
Ithaca College is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in film, video & photographic arts. Ithaca is a small private not-for-profit college located in the small suburb of Ithaca.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the film program make an average of $23,782 in their early career salary.
Rochester Institute of Technology is a good decision for students interested in a bachelor's degree in film, video & photographic arts. RIT is a large private not-for-profit school located in the suburb of Rochester.
Bachelor's recipients from the film, video & photographic arts major at Rochester Institute of Technology get $4,722 more than the average college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
Syracuse University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in film, video & photographic arts. Syracuse is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Syracuse.
Film, Video & Photographic Arts bachelor's degree recipients from Syracuse University earn a boost of about $2,195 above the average earnings of film, video & photographic arts majors.
Located in the large suburb of Buffalo, University at Buffalo is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the film, video & photographic arts major at University at Buffalo make $2,494 above the standard graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
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.