Physician Assistant is of the hottest degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #71 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Physician Assistant Schools in Iowa ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 147 degrees in physician assistant annually.
The physician assistant program you select can have a big impact on your future. That's why we developed our collection of Best Schools for Physician Assistant rankings. In order to come up with a best overall ranking for physician assistant schools, we combine our degree-level rankings, weighting them by the number of degrees awarded at each level.
In order to find the schools that are the best fit for you, you may want to filter to one of the degree levels below.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Physician Assistant Schools in Iowa list, to help you choose the best school for you.
You can also filter this list by location to find schools closer to you.
In addition to College Factual's rankings, you may want to take a look at College Combat, our unique tool that lets you pit your favorite schools head-to-head and compare how they rate on factors that most interest you.
When you have some time, check it out - you may want to bookmark the link so you don't forget it.
If you aren't interested in a particular degree level and want to know which schools are the overall best at delivering an education for the physician assistant degrees they offer, see the list below.
Every student who is interested in physician assistant needs to look into University of Iowa. Located in the small city of Iowa City, Iowa is a public university with a fairly large student population. A Best Colleges rank of #80 out of 2,152 colleges nationwide means Iowa is a great university overall.
There were about 48 physician assistant students who graduated with this degree at Iowa in the most recent year we have data available.
Every student who is interested in physician assistant needs to check out Saint Ambrose University. St. Ambrose University is a small private not-for-profit university located in the midsize city of Davenport. This university ranks 11th out of 37 schools for overall quality in the state of Iowa.
There were approximately 30 physician assistant students who graduated with this degree at St. Ambrose University in the most recent data year.
It is difficult to beat Northwestern College if you wish to pursue a degree in physician assistant. NWC is a small private not-for-profit college located in the town of Orange City. This college ranks 18th out of 37 schools for overall quality in the state of Iowa.More information about a degree in physician assistant from Northwestern College
Best Physician Assistant Colleges in the Plains States Region
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).