a doctor's degree in food science is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #107 out of 862 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Food Science Doctor's Degree Schools ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 175 doctor's degrees in food science to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Food Science School for Your Doctor's Degree
Your choice of food science for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality food sciences program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 take this into account we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of different 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 many resources a school devotes to food science students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other food science 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.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized food science related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for food science students working on their doctor's degree.
The food sciences 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 Food Science Doctor's Degree Schools.
Best Schools for Doctorate Students to Study Food Science in the United States
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a doctor's degree in food science.
Any student pursuing a degree in a doctor's degree in food science has to check out Cornell University. Located in the small city of Ithaca, Cornell is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.More information about a doctorate in food science from Cornell University
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).