If you pursue a master's degree in general biology, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #31 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 7 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best General Biology Master's Degree Schools in North Carolina ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 211 master's degrees in general biology to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great General Biology School for Your Master's Degree
The biology master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality biology program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to general biology students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other general biology students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How easy is it for general biology to pay back their student loans after receiving their master's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized general biology related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for general biology students working on their master's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best General Biology Master's Degree Schools in North Carolina list to help you make the college decision.
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It is hard to beat Duke University if you want to pursue a master's degree in general biology. Duke is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Durham.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the biology program make an average of $29,519 in their early career salary.
Wake Forest University is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in general biology. Located in the city of Winston-Salem, Wake Forest University is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Master's recipients from the general biology degree program at Wake Forest University make $7,507 above the standard college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
It's difficult to beat Appalachian State University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in general biology. Appalachian State is a very large public university located in the town of Boone.
Master's recipients from the general biology program at Appalachian State University make $3,402 above the typical college graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Located in the large city of Greensboro, NC A&T is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those general biology students who get their master's degree from North Carolina A & T State University earn $5,538 more than the typical biology grad.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
The biology master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality biology program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
