Ranked #20 in popularity, general psychology 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 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best General Psychology Doctor's Degree Schools in California ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 174 doctor's degrees in general psychology to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great General Psychology School for Your Doctor's Degree
The psychology doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality psychology program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination 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 general psychology students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other general psychology 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 much debt general psychology 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 general psychology related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general psychology 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 General Psychology Doctor's Degree Schools in California ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Every student who is interested in a doctor's degree in general psychology needs to look into University of California - Los Angeles. UCLA is a very large public university located in the city of Los Angeles.
After graduating, psychology doctorate recipients usually earn an average of $62,453 in the first five years of their career.
Every student pursuing a degree in a doctor's degree in general psychology has to take a look at Northcentral University. Northcentral University is a large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of San Diego.
Doctorate recipients from the general psychology major at Northcentral University earn $7,595 more than the average graduate in this field 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 psychology doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality psychology program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
