2025 Best Cognitive Science Doctor's Degree Schools
2Colleges in the United States
76Doctor's Degrees
Cognitive Science isn't the most popular doctorate program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #153 in popularity out of 306 majors in the country. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for cognitive science students pursuing a doctor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 76 doctor's degrees in cognitive science to qualified students.
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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 many resources a school devotes to cognitive science students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of cognitive science students who choose to seek a doctor's degree at the school.
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 cognitive science 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 cognitive science related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for cognitive science students working on their doctor's degree.
The cognitive science school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Cognitive Science Doctor's Degree Schools.
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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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
