General Biology is of the hottest doctor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #19 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 51 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best General Biology Doctor's Degree Schools ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,911 doctor's degrees in general biology to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great General Biology School for Your Doctor's Degree
The biology doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. 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
The overall quality of a doctor's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Doctor'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 doctor's degree from the school. After all, your doctor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 - How many other general biology students want to attend this school to pursue a doctor's degree.
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 easy is it for general biology to pay back their student loans after receiving their doctor'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 doctor's degree.
The biology school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best General Biology Doctor's Degree Schools.
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Best Schools for Doctorate Students to Study General Biology in the United States
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a doctor's degree in general biology. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
University of California - San Diego is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a doctor's degree in general biology. UCSD is a fairly large public university located in the large city of La Jolla.
Doctorate recipients from the general biology major at University of California - San Diego earn $3,440 above the average college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
It's difficult to beat Johns Hopkins University if you want to pursue a doctor's degree in general biology. Johns Hopkins is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Baltimore.
Those general biology students who get their doctor's degree from Johns Hopkins University earn $19,841 more than the standard biology grad.
Northwestern is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Evanston.
Doctorate recipients from the general biology program at Northwestern University make $10,092 more than the typical college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
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Additional Noteworthy Schools
These are some additional schools worth mentioning that are also great but just didn't quite make the cut to earn our top Best General Biology Doctor's Degree Schools award.
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 doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. 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:
