General Biology is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #31 most popular major 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 looked at 8 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best General Biology Master's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 310 master's degrees in general biology to qualified students.
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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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master'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 - 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 complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general biology students working on their master'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 Master's Degree Schools in Illinois.
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Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in general biology needs to look into Loyola University Chicago. Located in the large city of Chicago, Loyola Chicago is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the biology program make about $22,488 for their early career.
It is hard to beat Southern Illinois University Edwardsville if you wish to pursue a master's degree in general biology. Located in the suburb of Edwardsville, SIUE is a public university with a large student population.
General Biology master's degree recipients from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville get an earnings boost of approximately $18,020 above the average earnings of general biology graduates.
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.