Public Administration & Social Service is about average in terms of popularity for bachelor's degrees programs. That is, it ranks #16 out of the 38 majors across the country that we analyze each year. So, you may have to do some digging around to find quality schools that offer the degree program. This list can help with that.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 74 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Public Administration & Social Service Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 4,608 bachelor's degrees in public administration & social service during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Choosing a Great Public Administration & Social Service School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The public administration & social service bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality public administration & social service program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a college'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 much a school focuses on public administration & social service students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of public administration & social service 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 easy is it for public administration & social service 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 public administration & social service related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for public administration & social service 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 Public Administration & Social Service Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic 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 Public Administration & Social Service in the Middle Atlantic Region
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a bachelor's degree in public administration & social service. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
14 Top Middle Atlantic Region Schools for a Bachelor's in Public Administration & Social Service
Improve the lives of individuals, families and communities with the human service tools gained from this online bachelor's from Southern New Hampshire University.
Prepare yourself to make the decisions that best serve a community, its constituents and its economic growth with this specialized business degree from Southern New Hampshire University.
These are some additional schools worth mentioning that are also great but just didn't quite make the cut to earn our top Best Public Administration & Social Service Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region award.
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).