Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Animal Science (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Animal Science earn a median of $49,634 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $36,349 and $66,880. We rank the 65 U.S. colleges whose Animal Science programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 5,703 graduates in all. That puts Animal Science at #111 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
University of Georgia, in Georgia, leads at $61,176, 22% above the median ranked school ($50,203). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $47,577 and $53,530, and the lowest earns $36,858, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 36 of the 65 ranked schools (55%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 20 public, 0 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 94% are public. The top 20 are spread across 16 states, with Texas the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $17,401 a year, against $17,447 across all 65 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $20,375 in federal loans, about 38% of one year of earnings. Measured against a typical high-school graduate in the same state, the median top-20 school recovers its net cost in about 3.6 years.
Showing the top 50 of 65 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | University of Georgia Athens, GA Public · 4-year | $61,176 | 67 | $18,250 | $13,936 | 2.0 |
| 2 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $57,605 | 48 | $25,000 | $17,354 | 3.5 |
| 3 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $57,324 | 243 | $17,592 | $21,315 | 3.8 |
| 4 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $56,248 | 33 † | $21,500 | $15,678 | 3.4 |
| 5 | University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR Public · 4-year | $56,136 | 47 | $21,616 | $18,209 | 3.1 |
| 6 | Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX Public · 4-year | $55,753 | 90 | $20,000 | $19,070 | 3.6 |
| 7 | Stephen F Austin State University Nacogdoches, TX Public · 4-year | $54,984 | 44 | $20,250 | $14,260 | 2.8 |
| 8 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $54,805 | 118 | $20,500 | $16,665 | 3.7 |
| 9 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $54,751 | 124 | $25,023 | $19,680 | 3.9 |
| 10 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $54,509 | 71 | $24,250 | $24,406 | 5.6 |
| 11 | Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette, IN Public · 4-year | $54,089 | 134 | $19,500 | $14,600 | 3.3 |
| 12 | Oklahoma State University-Main Campus Stillwater, OK Public · 4-year | $53,971 | 197 | $18,750 | $17,447 | 3.6 |
| 13 | Colorado State University-Fort Collins Fort Collins, CO Public · 4-year | $53,934 | 55 | $21,500 | $21,279 | 6.4 |
| 14 | University of Kentucky Lexington, KY Public · 4-year | $53,918 | 42 | $20,800 | $18,851 | 4.1 |
| 15 | South Dakota State University Brookings, SD Public · 4-year | $53,784 | 117 | $21,349 | $19,841 | 4.7 |
| 16 | California State University-Fresno Fresno, CA Public · 4-year | $53,579 | 76 | $17,500 | $7,000 | 1.7 |
| 17 | University of Wisconsin-Platteville Platteville, WI Public · 4-year | $53,530 | 95 | $18,748 | $16,032 | 4.0 |
| 18 | Northwest Missouri State University Maryville, MO Public · 4-year | $53,418 | 32 † | $18,089 | $16,244 | 3.5 |
| 19 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $53,226 | 151 | $20,921 | $17,303 | 3.6 |
| 20 | Auburn University Auburn, AL Public · 4-year | $53,117 | 72 | $19,500 | $24,323 | 4.7 |
| 21 | California State Polytechnic University-Pomona Pomona, CA Public · 4-year | $53,017 | 93 | $15,167 | $11,531 | 2.9 |
| 22 | Cornell University Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $52,967 | 62 | $12,730 | $28,690 | 6.7 |
| 23 | Mississippi State University Mississippi State, MS Public · 4-year | $52,755 | 62 | $19,719 | $17,595 | 3.2 |
| 24 | West Virginia University Morgantown, WV Public · 4-year | $52,548 | 76 | $19,500 | $15,634 | 3.4 |
| 25 | Iowa State University Ames, IA Public · 4-year | $51,644 | 293 | $20,500 | $18,589 | 5.1 |
| 26 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $51,271 | 106 | $19,000 | $16,778 | 5.0 |
| 27 | Texas State University San Marcos, TX Public · 4-year | $51,157 | 27 † | $20,875 | $16,805 | 4.1 |
| 28 | North Dakota State University-Main Campus Fargo, ND Public · 4-year | $50,975 | 60 | $21,439 | $15,543 | 4.4 |
| 29 | Kansas State University Manhattan, KS Public · 4-year | $50,941 | 205 | $20,500 | $19,406 | 4.8 |
| 30 | University of Maine Orono, ME Public · 4-year | $50,825 | 26 † | $25,000 | $17,510 | 5.5 |
| 31 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $50,769 | 168 | $21,500 | $17,339 | 4.7 |
| 32 | SUNY College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskill Cobleskill, NY Public · 4-year | $50,491 | 194 | $20,000 | $18,701 | 5.1 |
| 33 | University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI Public · 4-year | $50,203 | 73 | $19,613 | $21,440 | 8.8 |
| 34 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $49,772 | 105 | $25,000 | $32,875 | 9.9 |
| 35 | The University of Tennessee-Knoxville Knoxville, TN Public · 4-year | $49,656 | 95 | $20,265 | $18,976 | 5.1 |
| 36 | Sam Houston State University Huntsville, TX Public · 4-year | $49,636 | 85 | $19,750 | $16,404 | 4.4 |
| 37 | Delaware Valley University Doylestown, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $49,225 | 88 | $25,569 | $28,278 | 8.9 |
| 38 | University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE Public · 4-year | $49,193 | 92 | $20,645 | $17,747 | 5.8 |
| 39 | University of Wyoming Laramie, WY Public · 4-year | $49,092 | 37 † | $17,750 | $13,599 | 5.3 |
| 40 | University of Wisconsin-River Falls River Falls, WI Public · 4-year | $48,680 | 187 | $21,224 | $14,054 | 5.1 |
| 41 | California State University-Chico Chico, CA Public · 4-year | $48,474 | 104 | $17,606 | $14,480 | 5.0 |
| 42 | University of Vermont Burlington, VT Public · 4-year | $48,468 | 50 | $23,250 | $19,343 | 6.9 |
| 43 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $48,441 | 247 | $13,000 | $14,741 | 5.1 |
| 44 | North Carolina A & T State University Greensboro, NC Public · 4-year | $48,155 | 65 | $27,156 | $10,846 | 3.1 |
| 45 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $48,026 | 84 | $19,000 | $14,355 | 4.8 |
| 46 | University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO Public · 4-year | $47,983 | 101 | $19,500 | $20,268 | 6.2 |
| 47 | Clemson University Clemson, SC Public · 4-year | $47,853 | 64 | $21,500 | $22,253 | 6.8 |
| 48 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $47,724 | 86 | $15,000 | $6,541 | 2.0 |
| 49 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $47,577 | 54 | $22,500 | $25,097 | 10.2 |
| 50 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $47,224 | 115 | $22,250 | $24,953 | 9.4 |
How this ranking is built
A school appears here only if it meets every condition below.
- Which programs count
- Main campuses only, one entry per institution. Scorecard reports program outcomes for the whole six-digit federal ID (OPEID6), so branch campuses share their parent’s numbers and are not listed twice.
- Only bachelor's degree programs in Animal Science (CIP 0109, the four-digit code Scorecard uses to group related programs).
- At least 25 graduates in the earnings sample. Smaller samples are left out because their medians swing too much and the counts carry a little privacy noise.
- A major gets a page only when at least 20 schools qualify. This one has 65.
- Ranked by median earnings 4 years after completing, highest first. Ties go to the larger sample, then to the school name.
- Schools missing earnings or a sample size are left out rather than estimated.
- What the numbers mean
- Earnings: median annual earnings of graduates four years after completing. The cohort completed in academic years 2017-18 and 2018-19 and was measured in calendar years 2022 and 2023, in 2024 dollars.
- Who is counted: graduates who received federal student aid (Title IV grants or loans), and only those who were working and not enrolled in more school that year. Graduates without federal aid, those who went on to further study and those with no earnings are not in the median.
- Scorecard adds privacy noise to counts and medians and hides values it cannot protect, so a gap of a few percent between two schools is not meaningful.
- Graduates: the number of graduates in that earnings sample. A † marks fewer than 40, where the figure is less precise.
- Debt: median federal loan debt (Stafford and Grad PLUS loans disbursed at that school) of graduates who borrowed, from the 2018-19 and 2019-20 completers. Parent PLUS and private loans are not included.
- Net price: average yearly cost after grants and scholarships for the whole institution, not this major, academic year 2023-24.
- Payback: 4 years of net price divided by how much these earnings exceed a high-school graduate’s in the school’s state. Shown only when that gap is at least $2,000, the same formula as the rest of the site.
- Source: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard field-of-study data, June 2026 release.
Top states for Animal Science earnings
Median of the school medians for states with at least 3 ranked schools. The best school in each state is shown.
| State | Median earnings | Ranked schools | Top school |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wisconsin | $53,530 | 3 | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| California | $53,017 | 5 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo |
| Texas | $50,397 | 8 | Texas A&M University-College Station |
| Missouri | $47,983 | 3 | Northwest Missouri State University |
Related majors
Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
-
Agricultural Business (Bachelor's)
$66,647 national median · 58 schools
-
Plant Science (Bachelor's)
$56,567 national median · 31 schools
-
Agriculture (Bachelor's)
$53,676 national median · 30 schools
-
Food Science (Bachelor's)
$70,873 national median · 21 schools
-
Education (General) (Bachelor's)
$49,808 national median · 40 schools
-
Linguistics (Bachelor's)
$49,984 national median · 52 schools
-
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (Bachelor's)
$48,842 national median · 30 schools
-
Recreation Facilities Management (Bachelor's)
$50,468 national median · 43 schools
All majors College rankings How to read Scorecard earnings data Community college vs. four-year college