Ranked #23 in popularity, computer science is one of the most sought-after doctor's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 45 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Computer Science Doctor's Degree Schools ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,478 doctor's degrees in computer science to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Information Technology - Software Application Development" with relevance 0.8
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Choosing a Great Computer Science School for Your Doctor's Degree
The compsci 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
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To take this into account we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on computer science students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other computer science students want to attend this school to pursue a doctor's degree.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How easy is it for computer science 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 computer science related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for computer science 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 Computer Science Doctor's Degree Schools ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "computer-information-sciences//computer-science"
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Information Technology - Software Application Development" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MS in Information Technology - Software Application Development" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Computer Information Systems" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Computer Information Systems" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 12
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DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 7 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.5
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Honorable Mentions
These are some additional schools worth mentioning that are also great but just didn't quite make the cut to earn our top Best Computer Science 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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
by our College Data Analytics Team
The compsci 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:
