2025 Best Computer Science Doctor's Degree Schools in California
8
Colleges in California
312
Doctor's Degrees
Ranked #23 in popularity,
computer science 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 8 schools in California to determine which ones were the best for computer science students pursuing a doctor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 312 doctor's degrees in computer science during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Jump to one of the following sections: * Our Methodology
Choosing a Great Computer Science School for Your Doctor's Degree
Your choice of computer science for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality compsci 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 computer science students as compared to other majors.
- Major Demand - The number of computer science students who choose to seek a doctor's degree at the school.
- 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 computer science 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 computer science related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for computer science students working on their doctor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Computer Science Schools
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Computer Science Doctor's Degree Schools in California ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.