If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in general visual & performing arts, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #94 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 76 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for general visual & performing arts students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 4,199 bachelor's degrees in general visual & performing arts during the <nil> academic year.
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Choosing a Great General Visual & Performing Arts School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of general visual & performing arts for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 general visual & performing arts students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of general visual & performing 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 general visual & performing 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 general visual & performing arts related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general visual & performing arts students working on their bachelor's degree.
More Ways to Rank General Visual & Performing Arts Schools
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best General Visual & Performing Arts Bachelor's Degree Schools 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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ADBLOCK #171
Best Schools for Bachelor’s Students to Study General Visual & Performing Arts in the United States
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in general visual & performing arts. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
It is hard to beat University of Florida if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in general visual & performing arts. Located in the medium-sized city of Gainesville, UF is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those general visual & performing arts students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Florida receive $5,273 more than the average visual arts graduate.
The University of Texas at Austin is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in general visual & performing arts. Located in the city of Austin, UT Austin is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the general visual & performing arts program at The University of Texas at Austin make $4,351 more than the average college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
It is hard to beat Arizona State University - Tempe if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in general visual & performing arts. ASU - Tempe is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Tempe.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the visual arts program make about $22,817 for their early career.
GMU is a very large public university located in the suburb of Fairfax.
General Visual & Performing Arts bachelor's degree recipients from George Mason University get an earnings boost of about $6,585 above the average income of general visual & performing arts majors.
Located in the medium-sized city of Richardson, UT Dallas is a public university with a very large student population.
General Visual & Performing Arts bachelor's degree recipients from The University of Texas at Dallas get an earnings boost of about $3,138 above the typical earnings of general visual & performing arts graduates.
UCF is a very large public university located in the suburb of Orlando.
Bachelor's recipients from the general visual & performing arts program at University of Central Florida earn $3,522 more than the average college graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
UW - Whitewater is a fairly large public university located in the town of Whitewater.
Those general visual & performing arts students who get their bachelor's degree from University of Wisconsin - Whitewater make $2,870 more than the typical visual arts graduate.
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Additional Noteworthy Schools
Here are some additional great schools for General Visual & Performing Arts students that almost earned our Best General Visual & Performing Arts Bachelor's Degree Schools award.
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).