2025 Best Geological & Earth Sciences Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region
4Colleges in the Southwest Region
138Doctor's Degrees
Geological & Earth Sciences is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #37 most popular doctor's degree program in the country. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Geological & Earth Sciences Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 138 doctor's degrees in geological & earth sciences during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Geological & Earth Sciences School for Your Doctor's Degree
Your choice of geological & earth sciences for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality geology 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
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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 geological & earth sciences students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of geological & earth sciences 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 easy is it for geological & earth sciences 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 geological & earth sciences related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for geological & earth sciences students working on their doctor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Geological & Earth Sciences Schools
The geology 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 Geological & Earth Sciences Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region.
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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
Your choice of geological & earth sciences for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality geology program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
