Ranked #22 in popularity, music is one of the most sought-after doctor's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 7 schools in the Middle Atlantic Region to determine which ones were the best for music students pursuing a doctor's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 225 doctor's degrees in music to qualified students.
Earn the music business degree that fits into the business world – and partners Southern New Hampshire University with world-renowned Berklee College of Music.
Choosing a Great Music School for Your Doctor's Degree
Your choice of music for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality music 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
The overall quality of a doctor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to music students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other music students want to attend this school to pursue a doctor's degree.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt music 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 music related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for music 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 Music Doctor's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Earn the music business degree that fits into the business world – and partners Southern New Hampshire University with world-renowned Berklee College of Music.
Every student pursuing a degree in a doctor's degree in music needs to take a look at University of Rochester. Located in the midsize city of Rochester, University of Rochester is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.
After graduation, music doctorate recipients usually earn about $49,861 at the beginning of their careers.
UMCP is a fairly large public university located in the suburb of College Park.
Doctorate recipients from the music program at University of Maryland - College Park make $15,602 above the standard 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.
Your choice of music for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality music program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
