2024 Best Value Philosophy & Religious Studies Schools in Pennsylvania

It’s not easy to decide which college to attend when there so many options available for students. College Factual was founded, in part, to help students make the decision as to what would be the best school for them. Our “Best Value Philosophy & Religious Studies Schools in Pennsylvania” ranking is part of that endeavor.

Philosophy & Religious Studies is the 28th most popular major in the country with 19,993 degrees awarded in 2020-2021. In 2019-2020, philosophy & religious studies graduates who were awarded their degree in 2017-2019, earned an average of $31,946 and had an average of $22,275 in loans still to pay off.

Across Pennsylvania, there were 982 philosophy & religious studies graduates with average earnings and debt of $36,081 and $25,058 respectively.

For this year’s “Best Value Philosophy & Religious Studies Schools in Pennsylvania” ranking, we looked at 2 colleges that offer a degree in philosophy & religious studies. This ranking identifies schools with high-quality philosophy & religious studies programs that also have a lower cost than schools of similar quality.

Some of the factors we look at when determining these rankings are overall quality of the philosophy & religious studies program at the school and the cost of the school after aid is awarded among other things. For more information, check out our ranking methodology.

More Ways to Rank Philosophy & Religious Studies 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 Value Philosophy & Religious Studies Schools in Pennsylvania” list to help you make the college decision.

We’ve created a tool called College Combat that lets you create your own customized comparisons based on the factors that matter the most to you. We encourage you to try it out and pit your favorite colleges and universities head to head! If you don’t have time right now, you can bookmark it for later.

Best Value Philosophy & Religious Studies Schools in Pennsylvania

The following schools top our list of the Best Best Value Philosophy & Religious Studies Schools in Pennsylvania.

Top 2 Best Value Colleges for Philosophy & Religious Studies in Pennsylvania

1

University of Scranton
Scranton, Pennsylvania

#2 in overall quality

$34,378 Average Net Price

$48,740 Average Early-Career Earnings

You’ll be in good company if you decide to attend University of Scranton. It ranked #1 on our 2024 Best Value Philosophy & Religious Studies Schools in Pennsylvania list. Located in Scranton, Pennsylvania, this small private not-for-profit school handed out 39 degrees to qualified ’s philosophy & religious studies students in 2020-2021.

As a testament to the quality of education offered at University of Scranton, the school also landed the #2 spot in our “Best Philosophy & Religious Studies Schools in Pennsylvania” ranking. It costs about $34,378 for Pennsylvania Philosophy & Religious Studies students per year to attend University of Scranton.

The school has an excellent freshman retention rate of 87%, which means students like the school well enough to return for a second year. The low undergrad student loan default rate of 1.5% is a good sign that students have an easier time paying off their loans than they might at other schools. For comparison, the national default rate is 10.1%.

Read more about Philosophy & Religious Studies at University of Scranton

2

University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

#1 in overall quality

$25,046 Average Net Price

$81,207 Average Early-Career Earnings

You’ll be in good company if you decide to attend University of Pennsylvania. It ranked #2 on our 2024 Best Value Philosophy & Religious Studies Schools in Pennsylvania list. Located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this large private not-for-profit school handed out 214 diplomas to qualified ’s philosophy & religious studies students in 2020-2021.

UPenn also took the #1 spot in our “Best Philosophy & Religious Studies Schools in Pennsylvania” ranking. The estimated yearly cost for UPenn is $25,046 for Pennsylvania Philosophy & Religious Studies students.

Since the school has a undergrad student-to-faculty ratio of 6 to 1, those pursuing a degree will have more opportunities to interact with their professors. Students who start out at the school are likely to stick around. The freshman retention rate is 98%. The school has an impressive undergrad student loan default rate. It’s only 0.9%, which is much lower than the national rate of 10.1%.

Read more about Philosophy & Religious Studies at UPenn

• Best Value Colleges for Philosophy & Religious Studies in the Middle Atlantic Region
• Best Value Colleges for Philosophy & Religious Studies

Notes and References

References

• 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 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).
• Information about the national average student loan default rate is from the U.S. Department of Education and refers to data about the 2016 borrower cohort tracking period for which the cohort default rate (CDR) was 10.1%.

Read more about our data sources and methodologies

Footnotes

• *Average salary, average net price, and average tuition and fees are for the top schools only.
• Some schools otherwise deserving of recognition may have been removed from this ranking in the event that new data identified post-publication warranted it, or at the request of the school.