Ranked #11 in popularity, chemistry is one of the most sought-after doctor's degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 25 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Chemistry Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 589 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
The chemistry doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To take this into account we include a college's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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 chemistry students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other chemistry 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 easy is it for chemistry 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 chemistry related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for chemistry 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 Chemistry Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region list to help you make the college decision.
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University of Florida is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a doctor's degree in chemistry. UF is a fairly large public university located in the city of Gainesville.
Doctorate students who receive their degree from the chemistry program make around $83,359 in their early career salary.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a wonderful option for individuals interested in a doctor's degree in chemistry. Located in the small city of Chapel Hill, UNC Chapel Hill is a public university with a very large student population.
Soon after graduation, chemistry doctorate recipients generally earn about $70,826 in the first five years of their career.
Located in the city of Raleigh, NC State is a public university with a very large student population.
Doctorate recipients from the chemistry degree program at North Carolina State University make $24,639 above the standard graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Located in the midsize city of Columbia, UofSC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those chemistry students who get their doctor's degree from University of South Carolina - Columbia make $4,432 more than the typical chemistry student.
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.
The chemistry doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
