Microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) is a new green ground improvement technique in geotechnical engineering and has a promising prospect in reinforcing granular soils. The uniformity and the mechanical performance of MICP-treated sands are important issues in the MICP method. To optimize the MICP-treatment scheme and improve the overall performance of MICP-treated sands, a comparative experimental study on different MICP-treatment schemes for sands was carried out. Firstly, the MICP-treatment schemes, including the conventional two-phase method, the pH method and the temperature-controlled method, were introduced in detail. Then, a series of MICP-treatment experiments on sand columns were conducted, following the three different schemes, respectively. Finally, the three different schemes were compared in terms of the distribution of CaCO₃ in the post-treatment specimens, the utilization rate of reaction solutions and the unconfined compressive strength of the post-treatment specimens. Under the testing conditions in this paper, the conventional two-phase method has the worst performance in the three aspects; the pH method and the temperature-controlled method generally perform well; in comparison with the pH method, the temperature-controlled method has a higher utilization rate of reaction solutions and a higher strength under high-treatment conditions; the temperature-controlled method has the best overall performance.