If you pursue a doctor's degree in general biology, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #19 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
College Factual reviewed 5 schools in the Far Western US Region to determine which ones were the best for doctor's degree seekers in the field of general biology. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 228 doctor's degrees in general biology during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their doctor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. That is, everyone wants their doctor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 colleges for general biology students working on their doctor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best General Biology Doctor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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University of California - San Diego is one of the best 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 graduates who receive their degree from the biology program make about $80,294 in the first couple years of their career.
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.