Chemistry is of the hottest doctor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #11 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 14 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Chemistry Doctor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 581 doctor's degrees in chemistry during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Chemistry School for Your Doctor's Degree
Your choice of chemistry for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality chemistry program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a doctor's degree school is important to ensure a good 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 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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on chemistry students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of chemistry students who choose to seek a doctor's degree at the school.
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 chemistry 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 chemistry related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for chemistry 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 Chemistry Doctor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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University of Michigan - Ann Arbor is a good choice for students interested in a doctor's degree in chemistry. U-M is a very large public university located in the medium-sized city of Ann Arbor.
Chemistry doctor's degree recipients from University of Michigan - Ann Arbor receive an earnings boost of approximately $17,847 over the average income of chemistry majors.
University of Wisconsin - Madison is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a doctor's degree in chemistry. Located in the city of Madison, UW - Madison is a public university with a very large student population.
Those chemistry students who get their doctor's degree from University of Wisconsin - Madison receive $16,529 more than the standard chemistry student.
Ohio State University - Main Campus is a good choice for students interested in a doctor's degree in chemistry. Ohio State is a fairly large public university located in the city of Columbus.
After graduation, chemistry doctorate recipients usually earn around $93,474 in their early careers.
It is hard to beat University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign if you wish to pursue a doctor's degree in chemistry. Located in the small city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a very large student population.
Doctorate recipients from the chemistry major at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign earn $8,931 more than the standard college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
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.
Your choice of chemistry for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality chemistry program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
