Ranked #31 in popularity, general biology is one of the most sought-after master's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 18 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best General Biology Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,084 master's degrees in general biology during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great General Biology School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of general biology for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on general biology students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of general biology students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt general biology students go into to obtain their master's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
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 the Southwest Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in general biology has to check out Texas A&M University - College Station. Located in the medium-sized city of College Station, Texas A&M College Station is a public university with a very large student population.
Those general biology students who get their master's degree from Texas A&M University - College Station earn $5,738 more than the typical biology graduate.
Arizona State University - Tempe is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in general biology. ASU - Tempe is a very large public university located in the midsize city of Tempe.
General Biology master's degree recipients from Arizona State University - Tempe earn a boost of around $7,054 over the average income of general biology graduates.
Northern Arizona University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in general biology. Located in the city of Flagstaff, NAU is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the biology program state that they receive average early career wages of $41,087.
Located in the large city of San Antonio, UTSA is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's recipients from the general biology major at The University of Texas at San Antonio earn $2,522 above the standard graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
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.
Your choice of general biology for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
