If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in general agriculture, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #130 in the country in terms of popularity. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2024, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best General Agriculture Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 272 bachelor's degrees in general agriculture to qualified students.
Choosing a Great General Agriculture School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of general agriculture for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality agriculture program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 general agriculture students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other general agriculture students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
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 much debt general agriculture 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 agriculture related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general agriculture 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 General Agriculture Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list to help you make the college decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
Best Schools for Bachelor’s Students to Study General Agriculture in the Far Western US Region
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in general agriculture.
Top Far Western US Region Schools for a Bachelor's in Agriculture
California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a bachelor's degree in general agriculture. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is a fairly large public university located in the small suburb of San Luis Obispo.
Bachelor's recipients from the general agriculture major at California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo make $8,974 above the typical college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
It is hard to beat Oregon State University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in general agriculture. Located in the city of Corvallis, Oregon State is a public university with a very large student population.
After graduation, agriculture bachelor's recipients generally make about $39,422 at the beginning of their careers.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in general agriculture has to look into University of Hawaii at Hilo. UH Hilo is a small public university located in the remote town of Hilo.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the agriculture program state that they receive average early career wages of $26,795.
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).