2024 Best Colleges for Photography

SUMMARY

Choosing to study Photography is a valuable choice and naturally a requisite first step for scholars endeavoring to enter a career as a studio photographer, a medical illustrator, or a photo technician. Interestingly, photography is a very rare degree being the 194th most popular degree. Last academic year, there were 1,219 photography graduates. In-state tuition for photography at private institutions is, on average, 3.4 times more spendy than their public peers.

With just 131 universities offering photography you may have limited options as to the institutions you can choose from. If you are looking to immerse yourself with other photography majors, consider looking at schools in New York which have more undergrads admitted to photography than any other state. Zooming out, the top region to get a degree in photography is in the Mid East region with The New School, Rochester Institute of Technology, and School of Visual Arts best representing the region. Interestingly, our selection of the top conference to major in photography is the Upstate Collegiate Athletic Association with Rochester Institute of Technology representing the conference. From our extensive list on the best colleges, our choice for the best school for photography is New York University.

The overall best school might not actually be the 'best' school for you. There might be tons more perspectives to weigh when choosing school. Things like campus amenities, transportation services, and food might definitely alter one's decision on where to go to university. At authority.org, we've evaluated the pros and cons for you. If, for example, you want to know which photography university has the top campus, the answer is New York University. If, for example, you are primarily interested in which school is home to the best campus, then we have a whole page dedicated to that. We have carefully pored through government databases, student reviews, professor reviews, and more in order to compare every major in the United States in an unbiased and informative way. Here you can find our well researched list for the universities with the best student life&nbspand our pick of the university with the best student life for photography is Rhode Island School of Design. Curious why? Keep scrolling to discover more about our top recommendations. Some of our decisions will probably surprise you.

If expense is a major deciding factor in your decisions, you might be cautious about Syracuse University. Syracuse University&nbspappears to be our most expensive school for photography, at least regarding out of state students. We do have an entire list of the most expensive&nbspuniversities that could put the expense at Syracuse University&nbspinto perspective. For more context, you could be interested to know that photography is the 171st most expensive degree in the United States, with an average bill of $32,400. To zoom out a little, the most costly state for photography nationally is Rhode Island demonstrated with a cost of $51,800 at the main college in the state Rhode Island School of Design. Even more broadly, the most expensive region of the country for photography is the Mid East region which is best demonstrated with Pratt Institute-Main with a cost of $51,754, Syracuse University with a cost of $50,616, and Drexel University with a cost of $52,146.

Our cheapest region for photography is the Rocky Mountains region which is represented by Brigham Young University-Provo with a cost of $5,790. On the bright side, the most affordable university for photography is SUNY at Purchase College. Authority.org's full list of the most affordable schools can be explored here.

In-state attendees can anticipate paying in the neighborhood of $11,400 for a degree in photography. The price swells dramatically to an average of $24,500 for an out-of-state public-school student. As such, you might be interested in our choice for the school representing the best value for photography: New York University. Through this link you will see our comprehensive list of the schools we see as being the best value&nbspin general. Bear in mind, this discussion is predicated on being an out-of-state student. The value proposition changes when in-state tuition costs are considered, as such, we are using out-of-state tuition as the baseline.

Earnings for photography students can cover a wide range, but within two-years of leaving college students will often make around $47,900. While there is much variation in earnings potential; top earners can enjoy pay up to $89,700. Straight out of college, the lowest end jobs within the photography field make $26,100, which could be worse. The top earning graduates for photography come from Drexel University&nbspand if you want to find the colleges with all of the highest earning graduates, we have that too.

The all-around diversity of photography is on the higher end, being within the 57th percentile of all programs. The college with the highest composite diversity for photography is New York University&nbspand here you can find our general list for the colleges which have the most diversity. The financial diversity of the Photography major is only within the 72nd percentile of all majors. Racial diversity is even lower in the 48th percentile. White students compose the largest share at 62% of scholars studying photography. Additionally, 66% of students pursuing a photography major are women.

We have insufficient professors data for photography to make the conclusions we normally would have made in this sentence. As we including information other than simply rankings we find that the university with the best professors for photography is New York University. One can find an explanation of our ever evolving ranking methodology for the best overall professors here, along with many of the finest professors in the U.S.

Finally, the most difficult university to get into for photography is New York University. While we do not necessarily see the value in it, we have a general page of the hardest colleges to get into. That being said, we hope you believe that considering university through a lens primarily formed from superlatives could be said to be the root of many of higher education's fundamental issues. We at Authority encourage you to look at some of our more focused pages on individual universities and peruse a few of our background pages on essential things to look out for as your university search continues.