2025 Best Civil Engineering Doctor's Degree Schools in Illinois
2Colleges in Illinois
46Doctor's Degrees
If you pursue a doctor's degree in civil engineering, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #29 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Civil Engineering Doctor's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 46 doctor's degrees in civil engineering to qualified students.
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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
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to civil engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other civil engineering 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 much debt civil engineering 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 civil engineering related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for civil engineering 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 Civil Engineering Doctor's Degree Schools in Illinois list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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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).