2025 Best Physics Doctor's Degree Schools in Massachusetts
3Colleges in Massachusetts
148Doctor's Degrees
If you pursue a doctor's degree in physics, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #16 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in Massachusetts to determine which ones were the best for physics students pursuing a doctor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 148 doctor's degrees in physics during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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. 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 school'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 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.
The physics 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 Physics Doctor's Degree Schools in Massachusetts.
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Northeastern University is a wonderful choice for students interested in a doctor's degree in physics. Located in the large city of Boston, Northeastern is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.More information about a doctorate in physics from Northeastern University
Boston University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a doctor's degree in physics. Located in the large city of Boston, Boston U is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.More information about a doctorate in physics from Boston University
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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
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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
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