You'll be studying one of the lesser sought-after majors if you pursue a degree in animal-assisted therapy. It is ranked #1045 out of 1506 major degree programs in terms of popularity. This may make is a little harder to find a school that is a good fit for you.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for animal-assisted therapy students pursuing a degree. Combined, these schools handed out 85 degrees in animal-assisted therapy to qualified students.
The animal-assisted therapy program you select can have a big impact on your future. That's why we developed our collection of Best Schools for Animal-Assisted Therapy rankings. In order to come up with a best overall ranking for animal-assisted therapy schools, we combine our degree-level rankings, weighting them by the number of degrees awarded at each level.
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 animal-assisted therapy 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 Animal-Assisted Therapy 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.
Best Schools for Animal-Assisted Therapy in the United States
The schools below may not offer all types of animal-assisted therapy degrees so you may want to filter by degree level first. However, they are great for the degree levels they do offer.
Any student pursuing a degree in animal-assisted therapy needs to take a look at Aurora University. Aurora is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Aurora. A Best Colleges rank of #348 out of 2,152 schools nationwide means Aurora is a great university overall.
There were about 21 animal-assisted therapy students who graduated with this degree at Aurora in the most recent year we have data available.
Carroll College is one of the best schools in the country for getting a degree in animal-assisted therapy. Carroll Montana is a small private not-for-profit college located in the city of Helena. This college ranks 7th out of 12 schools for overall quality in the state of Montana.
There were approximately 19 animal-assisted therapy students who graduated with this degree at Carroll Montana in the most recent year we have data available.
It's hard to beat Hocking College if you want to pursue a degree in animal-assisted therapy. Hocking Technical College is a small public college located in the rural area of Nelsonville. This college ranks 64th out of 91 schools for overall quality in the state of Ohio.
There were roughly 11 animal-assisted therapy students who graduated with this degree at Hocking Technical College 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).
The animal-assisted therapy program you select can have a big impact on your future. That's why we developed our collection of Best Schools for Animal-Assisted Therapy rankings. In order to come up with a best overall ranking for animal-assisted therapy schools, we combine our degree-level rankings, weighting them by the number of degrees awarded at each level.
