Sociology is of the hottest bachelor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #19 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2024 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in West Virginia to determine which ones were the best for sociology students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 185 bachelor's degrees in sociology during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Choosing a Great Sociology School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The sociology bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality sociology program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection 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 much a school focuses on sociology students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other sociology students want to attend this school to pursue a bachelor's degree.
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 easy is it for sociology 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 sociology related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for sociology students working on their bachelor's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Sociology Bachelor's Degree Schools in West Virginia ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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 Sociology in West Virginia
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in sociology.
Top West Virginia Schools for a Bachelor's in Sociology
Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in sociology needs to look into West Virginia University. WVU is a very large public university located in the city of Morgantown.
Soon after graduating, sociology bachelor's recipients typically earn around $32,177 at the beginning of their careers.
American Public University System is a good decision for students interested in a bachelor's degree in sociology. American Military University is a very large private for-profit university located in the fringe town of Charles Town.
Sociology bachelor's degree recipients from American Public University System get an earnings boost of around $5,175 above the average earnings of sociology graduates.
Shepherd University is a good option for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in sociology. Located in the town of Shepherdstown, Shepherd University is a public university with a small student population.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the sociology program report average early career income of $30,461.
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).