If you pursue a bachelor's degree in music, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #34 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 15 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Music Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 557 bachelor's degrees in music during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Earn the music business degree that fits into the business world – and partners Southern New Hampshire University with world-renowned Berklee College of Music.
Choosing a Great Music School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of music for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality music 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 music students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other music 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 easy is it for music 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 music related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for music 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 Music Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois 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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Earn the music business degree that fits into the business world – and partners Southern New Hampshire University with world-renowned Berklee College of Music.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in music has to take a look at Northwestern University. Northwestern is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Evanston.
Music bachelor's degree recipients from Northwestern University get an earnings boost of around $6,807 over the typical earnings of music graduates.
It is hard to beat University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in music. Located in the city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the music program report average early career earnings of $13,128.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in music needs to look into DePaul University. Located in the city of Chicago, DePaul is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the music program state that they receive average early career wages of $19,155.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in music has to look into Wheaton College Illinois. Wheaton College Illinois is a small private not-for-profit college located in the large suburb of Wheaton.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the music program state that they receive average early career income of $26,540.
Located in the suburb of Normal, Illinois State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the music degree program at Illinois State University earn $4,837 more than the standard graduate 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.
Your choice of music for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality music program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
