If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in international relations & national security, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #58 in the country in terms of popularity. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best International Relations & National Security Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 232 bachelor's degrees in international relations & national security to qualified students.
Choosing a Great International Relations & National Security School for Your Bachelor's Degree
Your choice of international relations & national security 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 account for this we include a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a combination of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 international relations & national security students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of international relations & national security 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 international relations & national security 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 international relations & national security related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for international relations & national security 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 International Relations & National Security Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
Best Schools for Bachelor’s Students to Study International Relations & National Security in the Rocky Mountains Region
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in international relations & national security.
Top Rocky Mountains Region Schools for a Bachelor's in International Relations
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in international relations & national security needs to check out University of Denver. DU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Denver.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the international relations program make around $40,923 in their early career salary.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in international relations & national security has to take a look at Brigham Young University - Provo. Located in the city of Provo, BYU is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Those international relations & national security students who get their bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University - Provo earn $9,981 more than the average international relations grad.
University of Idaho is a great option for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in international relations & national security. Located in the distant town of Moscow, U of I is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the international relations program state that they receive average early career earnings of $30,261.
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).