Rankings tell you what a university is thought of. They do not tell you what it makes.
The US Department of Education collects, from every university, how many bachelor's degrees it awarded in each subject. We went through that collection for 2,346 universities and ranked them by what they graduate, in the ten subjects international students ask about most.
One example first, because it explains why the numbers are worth your time. MIT graduates 342 computer scientists a year and UC Berkeley graduates 866. On volume, Berkeley wins easily. But CS is 29.8% of everything MIT awards and 9.4% of what Berkeley awards. Nearly a third of MIT's graduating class studies computer science. At Berkeley it is under a tenth.
Those are two different universities to attend for the same degree, and no ranking table will tell you which is which.
How to read these tables
Each subject below shows the universities awarding the most degrees in it, with the share of that university's total output alongside.
Graduates a year tells you scale: how many people are in your cohort, how many sections the department runs, how large the alumni network in that field is.
Share of all degrees tells you focus: what proportion of the whole university is doing what you are doing.
A high share means the place is organised around your subject. It does not mean the teaching is better. Several of the most concentrated institutions are specialist schools that award little else, and some of the largest by volume are online universities enrolling tens of thousands. Both are flagged where they appear.
Computer Science
683 universities awarded computer science degrees.
| University | Graduates a year | Share of all degrees |
|---|---|---|
| Oregon State | 911 | 15.6% |
| UC Berkeley | 866 | 9.4% |
| Maryland | 859 | 10.6% |
| Arizona State | 708 | 5.1% |
By concentration the list changes completely. Florida Polytechnic awards 51.9% of its degrees in computer science, MIT 29.8%, Stanford 18.6%, and Colorado School of Mines 18.3%.
A student who went from teaching Python to studying CS at Michigan and a student from Cairo who reached UChicago on a full scholarship took two different routes into the same subject.
Business
1,402 universities, the widest field in the data.
| University | Graduates a year | Share of all degrees |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco State | 986 | 18.4% |
| Cal State Sacramento | 962 | 12.8% |
| NC State | 918 | 14.4% |
| Cal State Los Angeles | 896 | 16.0% |
Concentration here is dominated by specialist schools. Babson College awards 100% of its bachelor's degrees in business, as does Hult International Business School. That is the definition of a business school rather than a measure of quality, and it is worth knowing before you apply somewhere that teaches nothing else.
Nursing
1,091 universities.
| University | Graduates a year | Share of all degrees |
|---|---|---|
| West Coast University-Los Angeles | 981 | 100.0% |
| West Coast University-Orange County | 973 | 89.8% |
| Texas Tech Health Sciences Center | 915 | 82.6% |
| UNC Wilmington | 789 | 21.1% |
Nursing is the subject where volume and concentration collapse into each other, because most of the largest producers are dedicated nursing schools. UNC Wilmington is the exception in this group: a general university with a large programme.
Psychology
1,282 universities.
| University | Graduates a year | Share of all degrees |
|---|---|---|
| Cal State Fullerton | 983 | 14.0% |
| Cal State Northridge | 978 | 13.1% |
| Arizona State | 948 | 6.8% |
| University of South Florida | 888 | 10.0% |
The most concentrated is the University of Mount Saint Vincent at 43.5%, followed by Capella University at 28.0% and Touro University at 23.8%.
Biology
1,333 universities.
| University | Graduates a year | Share of all degrees |
|---|---|---|
| Florida International | 918 | 9.2% |
| Arizona State | 909 | 6.5% |
| UC Irvine | 766 | 9.1% |
| UC Riverside | 703 | 12.2% |
By concentration, Xavier University of Louisiana leads at 34.6%, with 145 biology graduates from a much smaller total than the universities above it.
Economics
Only 542 universities award economics degrees, which makes it one of the narrower fields here.
| University | Graduates a year | Share of all degrees |
|---|---|---|
| Michigan | 522 | 7.4% |
| Wisconsin-Madison | 441 | 5.4% |
| Connecticut | 384 | 6.9% |
| Utah State | 326 | 7.7% |
The concentration leader is College of the Holy Cross at 16.4%, more than double Michigan's share on a fraction of the volume. A small liberal arts college where one degree in six is economics is a different environment from a large public where it is one in fourteen.
Mechanical Engineering
379 universities.
| University | Graduates a year | Share of all degrees |
|---|---|---|
| Purdue | 478 | 5.7% |
| Texas A&M | 469 | 3.5% |
| Georgia Tech | 437 | 13.6% |
| Central Florida | 424 | 3.2% |
This is the subject with the sharpest concentration gap. Kettering University awards 44.1% of its degrees in mechanical engineering and Rose-Hulman 32.0%, against Purdue's 5.7% on similar volume.
A student who chose Georgia Tech over Canadian universities wrote about weighing exactly this kind of difference.
Electrical Engineering
364 universities, the narrowest field in this list.
| University | Graduates a year | Share of all degrees |
|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley | 456 | 4.9% |
| UT Austin | 342 | 3.4% |
| Rutgers | 289 | 3.3% |
| Texas A&M | 270 | 2.0% |
Carnegie Mellon has the highest share at 10.4%. A student from Armenia who chose Berkeley describes what drove the decision.
Political Science
1,015 universities.
| University | Graduates a year | Share of all degrees |
|---|---|---|
| UCLA | 601 | 6.5% |
| UC Berkeley | 395 | 4.3% |
| Florida State | 388 | 4.2% |
| Central Florida | 366 | 2.8% |
The concentration list is the most intuitive in the whole dataset: Dartmouth 11.3%, the United States Naval Academy 11.0%, American University 9.9%, Georgetown 9.3% and George Washington 9.0%. Four of those five sit in or near Washington DC.
A student from Myanmar who reached Dartmouth on a full ride is one of that cohort.
Accounting
1,030 universities.
| University | Graduates a year | Share of all degrees |
|---|---|---|
| Southern New Hampshire | 641 | 6.2% |
| University of Phoenix-Arizona | 585 | 13.3% |
| CUNY Baruch | 525 | 14.2% |
| Illinois Urbana-Champaign | 314 | 3.7% |
CUNY Baruch has the highest share of the four at 14.2%. Check how each of these universities delivers the degree before you apply, because this subject is one where the largest producers include institutions that teach primarily at a distance.
Mathematics
1,090 universities award maths degrees, but almost none in quantity.
| University | Graduates a year | Share of all degrees |
|---|---|---|
| UT Austin | 308 | 3.1% |
| UC Irvine | 249 | 3.0% |
| UMass Amherst | 213 | 3.1% |
| University of Washington | 175 | 2.1% |
The University of Chicago is the outlier at 8.1%, more than double the share of anywhere else of its size. If you want to be somewhere maths is central rather than peripheral, that number is the clearest signal in this dataset.
What these numbers do not measure
Quality. Concentration measures what a university awards, not how well it teaches it. A specialist school awards 100% of its degrees in one subject by definition.
Your chances of admission. Graduating a lot of computer scientists says nothing about whether you will get in.
Money. None of this says what a university costs you or whether it funds international students. Our guides to what US universities cost and what it costs to apply cover that.
Anywhere outside the US. This collection covers US institutions, so there are no UK, Canadian or Australian universities in it.
The figures are from IPEDS, the US Department of Education's own collection, for the 2022-23 cycle, and they count bachelor's degrees awarded.
Start your own journey
Use these tables the way you would use a map rather than a scoreboard. A large number tells you a department has scale. A large share tells you the university is built around your subject. Neither tells you the teaching is good, and you should check that separately.
The useful question is not which university is best. It is which university is doing the most of what you came to do.
Kai, the Borderless AI college counselor, matches universities to the subject you want, checks which ones fund international students, and tells you what each would cost you. It's free to use.
Start with Kai, and read the stories from students in every one of these subjects.
