Ranked #5 in popularity, nursing is one of the most sought-after doctor's degree programs in the nation. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in District of Columbia to determine which ones were the best for nursing students pursuing a doctor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 77 doctor's degrees in nursing during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their doctor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. That is, everyone wants their doctor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 nursing students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other nursing 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.
Student Debt - How much debt nursing 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 nursing related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for nursing students working on their doctor's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Nursing Doctor's Degree Schools in District of Columbia list to help you make the college decision.
Best Schools for Doctorate Students to Study Nursing in District of Columbia
Learn about the top ranked colleges and universities for nursing students seeking a a doctor's degree.
Top District of Columbia Schools for a Doctorate in Nursing
Every student pursuing a degree in a doctor's degree in nursing needs to check out Georgetown University. Georgetown is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Washington.
Those nursing students who get their doctor's degree from Georgetown University receive $43,791 more than the standard nursing graduate.
Any student pursuing a degree in a doctor's degree in nursing has to check out Catholic University of America. CUA is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Washington.
After graduation, nursing doctorate recipients generally earn about $133,420 in the first five years of their career.
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).