If you plan on majoring in linguistics, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #206 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2024 ranking, College Factual looked at 84 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for linguistics students pursuing a degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 3,247 degrees in linguistics during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Your choice of linguistics school matters, so we have put together these rankings to help you make your decision. We derive our Best Overall Linguistics School rankings by rolling up our degree-level rankings after weighting them by the number of degrees awarded at each school.
In order to find the schools that are the best fit for you, you may want to filter to one of the degree levels below.
The linguistics school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Linguistics Schools.
If you'd like to restrict your choices to just one part of the country, you can filter this list by location.
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.
The schools below may not offer all types of linguistics degrees so you may want to filter by degree level first. However, they are great for the degree levels they do offer. Only those schools that rank in the top 15% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
Any student who is interested in linguistics needs to check out Columbia University in the City of New York. Columbia is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of New York. A Best Colleges rank of #14 out of 2,217 colleges nationwide means Columbia is a great university overall.
There were roughly 1 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at Columbia in the most recent data year.
University of California - Los Angeles is a wonderful option for students interested in a degree in linguistics. UCLA is a fairly large public university located in the city of Los Angeles. A Best Colleges rank of #26 out of 2,217 colleges nationwide means UCLA is a great university overall.
There were roughly 45 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at UCLA in the most recent year we have data available.
University of Southern California is one of the best schools in the country for getting a degree in linguistics. Located in the city of Los Angeles, USC is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population. A Best Colleges rank of #11 out of 2,217 schools nationwide means USC is a great university overall.
There were about 21 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at USC in the most recent data year.
It's difficult to beat Georgetown University if you want to pursue a degree in linguistics. Georgetown is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Washington. A Best Colleges rank of #15 out of 2,217 colleges nationwide means Georgetown is a great university overall.
There were approximately 56 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at Georgetown in the most recent data year.
Located in the city of Berkeley, UC Berkeley is a public university with a fairly large student population. A Best Colleges rank of #18 out of 2,217 colleges nationwide means UC Berkeley is a great university overall.
There were about 61 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at UC Berkeley in the most recent data year.
UIUC is a fairly large public university located in the city of Champaign. This university ranks 3rd out of 85 colleges for overall quality in the state of Illinois.
There were about 39 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at UIUC in the most recent data year.
Duke is a large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Durham. A Best Colleges rank of #7 out of 2,217 schools nationwide means Duke is a great university overall.
There were about 17 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at Duke in the most recent data year.
NYU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of New York. A Best Colleges rank of #27 out of 2,217 schools nationwide means NYU is a great university overall.
There were about 6 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at NYU in the most recent data year.
Brown is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the medium-sized city of Providence. A Best Colleges rank of #21 out of 2,217 schools nationwide means Brown is a great university overall.
There were about 7 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at Brown in the most recent year we have data available.
UW Seattle is a very large public university located in the city of Seattle. This university ranks 1st out of 51 colleges for overall quality in the state of Washington.
There were approximately 58 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at UW Seattle in the most recent data year.
UChicago is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Chicago. A Best Colleges rank of #2 out of 2,217 colleges nationwide means UChicago is a great university overall.
There were approximately 43 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at UChicago in the most recent data year.
UCSB is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized suburb of Santa Barbara. This university ranks 10th out of 168 colleges for overall quality in the state of California.
There were roughly 78 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at UCSB in the most recent data year.
UF is a very large public university located in the city of Gainesville. This university ranks 1st out of 77 schools for overall quality in the state of Florida.
There were approximately 76 linguistics students who graduated with this degree at UF in the most recent data year.
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).
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Your choice of linguistics school matters, so we have put together these rankings to help you make your decision. We derive our Best Overall Linguistics School rankings by rolling up our degree-level rankings after weighting them by the number of degrees awarded at each school.
