The best social work research universities are those with rich histories of influence, proven through the work produced by the program’s faculty and alumni. Beyond demonstrating scholarly impact in the field, the best social work degree programs maximize your opportunities to interact with outstanding social work faculty.
A bachelor’s degree in social work is an excellent starting point for a career in counseling, case work, rehabilitation, and numerous other important areas of public health and welfare. As a social work major, you’ll learn about the administration of social services, distribution of resources for social welfare, and public outreach to vulnerable groups. As a social worker, you’ll be working closely with communities, populations, families and individuals who are facing challenge, disadvantage, and crisis. The best schools for social work are those which are regionally accredited, which offer a full array of social work concentrations, and which give you the chance to work with the best and most influential professors and classmates.
Related: How to Major in Social Work
In pursuing a bachelor’s degree, you will need to choose between three kinds of schools: research universities, liberal arts colleges, and online colleges.
Research universities are colleges and universities whose faculty are active in research and publishing. These schools offer a wide array of doctoral programs, especially in the sciences. They tend to be big, with tens of thousands of students.
Do you prefer a larger university setting, such as largest public university in your state? Research universities are typically big, offering degrees in many different disciplines. Is a big high-powered research environment the thing for you. If not, you should think about a liberal arts college. In deciding on an undergraduate institution, ask yourself what sort of environment will best help you to be happy and excel.
Often referred to as “teaching colleges” liberal arts colleges put a premium on undergraduate studies and offers a broad range of subjects for students to study. A college of liberal arts typically provides smaller class sizes, more direct engagement with professors, and, most importantly, the opportunity to sample a wide range of subject areas on the way to a bachelor’s degree.
Online colleges are typically the same colleges and universities you could attend in-person, but for certain degree programs the college or unviersity has made the degree programs available to be completed online. For over 5 million students, online degree programs allow students to earn their degrees in the most flexible format available. Online degrees are as respected as the on-campus degress you could earn from the same schools. There’s usually no disctinction between the two degrees, and your degree and transcript will not say that the degree was earned online. Online degree programs are offered by a vast majority of colleges and universities, and the number of offering continues to grow. Whehter you are searching for an associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate, there’s a good chance you can earn your degree online from a respectable online college.
If you interested in an online bachelor’s degree, check out what the best online colleges offer, or search our online degrees for the exact program that interests you. In either case, you will find well respected colleges and universities that offer online degrees.
Back to TopIf you think a liberal arts college may be a better fit for you, see our ranking of the best liberal arts colleges for a bachelor’s in social work.
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great. This is why we rank the best colleges and universities based on what we call “Influence”.
The influence of a college or university is based on the schools’ top academic influencers related to the discipline in this ranking. We track the influence of faculty and alumni affialiate with these school counting not only the publicaitons and citations of the school’s affiliated people, but we also consider the overall web presense of the faculty and alumni. The greater the citations, authority of web links, web searches, and pageviews, the greater the individuals’ influence. Those combined make up the departments’ influence in the field of study. We believe tracking the academic influence of the people affiliated with a school is the best indicator of academic excellence.
If you are serious about finding the best colleges and universities, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching, and whether their graduates themselves are advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence. Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and misuesed performance metrics. Influence, as measured by our InfluenceRanking engine, provides a ranking that is more insulated from manipulation, and more reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
Tuition + fees
$62K
Acceptance
9%
Graduation
96%
Student body
28K
Median SAT/ACT
1505/34
University of Pennsylvania’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
17%
Graduation
92%
Student body
43K
Median SAT/ACT
1430/33
University of California, Berkeley’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$57K
Acceptance
21%
Graduation
88%
Student body
49K
Median SAT/ACT
1440/32
New York University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
32%
Graduation
88%
Student body
44K
Median SAT/ACT
1355/30
University of Texas at Austin’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
56%
Graduation
82%
Student body
44K
Median SAT/ACT
1345/30
University of Washington’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
48%
Graduation
87%
Student body
38K
Median SAT/ACT
1330/29
University of Georgia’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
68%
Graduation
87%
Student body
56K
Median SAT/ACT
1355/30
Ohio State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$56K
Acceptance
53%
Graduation
83%
Student body
16K
Median SAT/ACT
1345/30
Fordham University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$60K
Acceptance
43%
Graduation
85%
Student body
21K
Median SAT/ACT
1375/31
George Washington University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
72%
Student body
35K
Median SAT/ACT
1210/27
University of Alabama’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$50K
Acceptance
68%
Graduation
79%
Student body
17K
Median SAT/ACT
1290/29
Baylor University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$16K
Acceptance
92%
Graduation
82%
Student body
20K
Median SAT/ACT
1290/27
Miami University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
63%
Graduation
83%
Student body
59K
Median SAT/ACT
1275/28
Texas A&M University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
32%
Graduation
84%
Student body
40K
Median SAT/ACT
1270/28
Florida State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
57%
Graduation
88%
Student body
38K
Median SAT/ACT
1390/29
University of Wisconsin–Madison’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$48K
Acceptance
71%
Graduation
76%
Student body
15K
Median SAT/ACT
1225/27
Loyola University Chicago’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
37%
Graduation
76%
Student body
34K
Median SAT/ACT
1215/25
San Diego State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$52K
Acceptance
48%
Graduation
82%
Student body
10K
Median SAT/ACT
1250/28
Texas Christian University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
33%
Graduation
55%
Student body
8K
Median SAT/ACT
1095/21
Florida A&M University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
45%
Graduation
74%
Student body
60K
Median SAT/ACT
1255/27
University of Central Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$23K
Acceptance
50%
Graduation
54%
Student body
75K
Median SAT/ACT
1150/24
Liberty University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Acceptance
46%
Graduation
84%
Student body
31K
Median SAT/ACT
1335/29
North Carolina State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
58%
Graduation
67%
Student body
48K
Median SAT/ACT
1195/25
Florida International University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$17K
Acceptance
63%
Graduation
86%
Student body
54K
Median SAT/ACT
1340/29
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$30K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
73%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1155/24
University of Detroit Mercy’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
If you want to know more about social work, then check out our related content:
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