a bachelor's degree in general agriculture is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #130 out of 363 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
College Factual looked at 3 colleges and universities when compiling its 2024 Best General Agriculture Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 258 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
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 full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for general agriculture students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best General Agriculture Bachelor's Degree Schools in Illinois 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.
Best Schools for Bachelor’s Students to Study General Agriculture in Illinois
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in general agriculture.
Top Illinois Schools for a Bachelor's in Agriculture
Illinois State University is a great option for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in general agriculture. Illinois State is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized suburb of Normal.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the agriculture program state that they receive average early career income of $41,426.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale is a great decision for students interested in a bachelor's degree in general agriculture. SIUC is a fairly large public university located in the city of Carbondale.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the agriculture program report average early career wages of $41,596.
Western Illinois University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in general agriculture. Located in the remote town of Macomb, WIU is a public university with a medium-sized student population.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the agriculture program earn an average of $40,735 in the first couple years of their career.
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).