If you pursue a doctor's degree in dentistry, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #7 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 8 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Dentistry Doctor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,089 doctor's degrees in dentistry to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Dentistry School for Your Doctor's Degree
The dentistry doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality dentistry program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 dentistry students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other dentistry 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 easy is it for dentistry 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 dentistry related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for dentistry 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 Dentistry Doctor's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Every student who is interested in a doctor's degree in dentistry has to look into Roseman University of Health Sciences. Located in the large city of Henderson, Roseman University of Health Sciences is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.
Soon after graduation, dentistry doctorate recipients generally make about $106,977 at the beginning of their careers.
It is difficult to beat Loma Linda University if you want to pursue a doctor's degree in dentistry. Located in the suburb of Loma Linda, Loma Linda University is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.More information about a doctorate in dentistry from Loma Linda University
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 dentistry doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality dentistry program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
