Social Work is of the hottest doctor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #38 most popular major in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 14 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Social Work Doctor's Degree Schools ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 926 doctor's degrees in social work to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Social Work School for Your Doctor's Degree
Your choice of social work for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality social work 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 take this into account we consider a college'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.
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 social work students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of social work 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.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized social work related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for social work 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 Social Work Doctor's Degree Schools ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Every student pursuing a degree in a doctor's degree in social work needs to take a look at Simmons University. Located in the large city of Boston, Simmons is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.More information about a doctorate in social work from Simmons University
One of 3 majors within the Social Work area of study, Social Work has other similar majors worth exploring.
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Notes and References
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 social work for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality social work program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
