Ranked #30 in popularity, communication sciences is one of the most sought-after doctor's degree programs in the nation. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 4 schools in Illinois to determine which ones were the best for communication sciences students pursuing a doctor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 82 doctor's degrees in communication sciences to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Communication Sciences School for Your Doctor's Degree
Your choice of communication sciences for getting your doctor'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
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.
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 communication sciences students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other communication sciences 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 much debt communication sciences 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 communication sciences related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for communication sciences students working on their doctor's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Communication Sciences Doctor's Degree Schools in Illinois list to help you make the college decision.
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Every student pursuing a degree in a doctor's degree in communication sciences has to check out Northwestern University. Northwestern is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Evanston.
Students who graduate with their doctorate from the communication sciences program state that they receive average early career income of $82,034.
Every student pursuing a degree in a doctor's degree in communication sciences needs to take a look at Rush University. Located in the large city of Chicago, Rush University is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.
Soon after graduation, communication sciences doctorate recipients usually earn around $80,786 in the first five 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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
Your choice of communication sciences for getting your doctor'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:
