If you plan on getting your doctor's degree in genetics, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #67 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Genetics Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 88 doctor's degrees in genetics during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Genetics School for Your Doctor's Degree
The genetics 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a doctor's degree school is important to ensure a quality 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.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of doctorate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their doctor'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 genetics students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of genetics students who choose to seek a doctor'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 genetics students go into to obtain their doctor'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 genetics related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for genetics students working on their doctor's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Genetics Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Duke University is a great choice for individuals pursuing a doctor's degree in genetics. Located in the large city of Durham, Duke is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Doctorate students who receive their degree from the genetics program make about $62,465 for their early career.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a doctor's degree in genetics. UNC Chapel Hill is a fairly large public university located in the city of Chapel Hill.
Soon after graduation, genetics doctorate recipients generally earn an average of $65,145 in the first five years of their career.
University of Georgia is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a doctor's degree in genetics. Located in the medium-sized city of Athens, UGA is a public university with a very large student population.More information about a doctorate in genetics from University of Georgia
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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
The genetics 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
