Religious Studies is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #72 most popular bachelor's degree program in the country. 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 2025 Best Religious Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 185 bachelor's degrees in religious studies to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Religious Studies School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of religious studies for getting your bachelor's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to religious studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of religious studies students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How easy is it for religious studies to pay back their student loans after receiving their bachelor's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized religious studies related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for religious studies 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 Religious Studies Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list to help you make the college 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 Religious Studies in the Southwest Region
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in religious studies.
Top Southwest Region Schools for a Bachelor's in Religion
Baylor University is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in religious studies. Baylor is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the midsize city of Waco.
After graduation, religion bachelor's recipients generally earn around $31,672 at the beginning of their 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).