Physics is of the hottest doctor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #16 most popular major in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 10 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Physics Doctor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 321 doctor's degrees in physics to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Physics School for Your Doctor's Degree
The physics 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 include a college's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their doctor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. That is, everyone wants their doctor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on physics students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of physics 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 physics 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 physics related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for physics students working on their doctor's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Physics Doctor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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University of Michigan - Ann Arbor is a wonderful decision for students interested in a doctor's degree in physics. Located in the city of Ann Arbor, U-M is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their doctorate from the physics program report average early career income of $95,584.
Ohio State University - Main Campus is a wonderful decision for students pursuing a doctor's degree in physics. Located in the large city of Columbus, Ohio State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Physics doctor's degree recipients from Ohio State University - Main Campus get an earnings boost of about $13,822 over the average earnings of physics majors.
UIUC is a fairly large public university located in the city of Champaign.
Doctorate recipients from the physics degree program at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign make $5,739 above the standard graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
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 physics 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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