You'll be studying one of the lesser sought-after majors if you pursue a Bachelor's Degree in soil sciences. It is ranked #250 out of 363 major degree programs in terms of popularity. As such, your educational options may be more limited than if you were in a more popular field.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for soil sciences students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 60 bachelor's degrees in soil sciences during the 2021-2022 academic year.
Choosing a Great Soil Sciences School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The soil sciences bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a good 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 various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their bachelor's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their bachelor's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to soil sciences students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of soil sciences students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
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 soil sciences 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 soil sciences related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for soil sciences students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Soil Sciences Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
In addition to College Factual's rankings, you may want to take a look at College Combat, our unique tool that lets you pit your favorite schools head-to-head and compare how they rate on factors that most interest you.
When you have some time, check it out - you may want to bookmark the link so you don't forget it.
Best Schools for Bachelor’s Students to Study Soil Sciences in the Great Lakes Region
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in soil sciences.
Top Great Lakes Region Schools for a Bachelor's in Soil Sciences
It is difficult to beat Michigan State University if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in soil sciences. Michigan State is a fairly large public university located in the small city of East Lansing.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the soil sciences program make an average of $50,770 for their early career.
It is hard to beat Southern Illinois University Carbondale if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in soil sciences. Located in the distant town of Carbondale, SIUC is a public university with a large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the soil sciences degree program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale earn $3,112 above the standard graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in soil sciences. UW - Stevens Point is a moderately-sized public university located in the distant town of Stevens Point.
Soon after graduating, soil sciences bachelor's recipients generally make about $50,046 in their early careers.
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).