Best Astronomy & Astrophysics Doctor’s Degree Colleges in California

Unfortunately, there were no schools in California that made our Best Astronomy & Astrophysics Doctor's Degree Schools in California list. You may want to check out our national ranking in the field instead.

Choosing a Great Astronomy & Astrophysics School for Your Doctor's Degree

Your choice of astronomy & astrophysics for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality astronomy program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.

A Great Overall School

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.

Early-Career Earnings

One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of doctorate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their doctor's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.

Other Factors We Consider

In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:

• Major Focus - How much a school focuses on astronomy & astrophysics students vs. other majors.
• Major Demand - How many other astronomy & astrophysics 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 astronomy & astrophysics 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 astronomy & astrophysics related body.

Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for astronomy & astrophysics students working on their doctor's degree.

Insufficient Data for California

Sad to say, we did not have sufficient facts to create a ranking of the quality colleges for astronomy & astrophysics in California. This is typically due to there not being enough schools in California that both offer astronomy & astrophysics and provided enough information for us to do a proper analysis.

As an alternative, look at at some of our other Astronomy & Astrophysics rankings below or check out our overall Best Colleges for Astronomy & Astrophysics ranking.

Best Astronomy & Astrophysics Colleges in the Far Western US Region

Explore all the Best Astronomy & Astrophysics Schools in the Far Western US Area or other specific states within that region.

State	Colleges	Degrees Awarded
Washington	122	5
Nevada	84	2
Hawaii	53	4
Alaska	19	0

View All Rankings >

Astronomy & Astrophysics Related Rankings by Major

One of 8 majors within the Physical Sciences area of study, Astronomy & Astrophysics has other similar majors worth exploring.

Astronomy Focus Areas

Major	Annual Graduates
Other Astronomy & Astrophysics	8
Astrophysics	7
Astronomy	5
Planetary Astronomy & Science	4

Most Popular Related Majors

Related Major	Annual Graduates
Chemistry	417
Physics	277
Geological & Earth Sciences	133
Materials Sciences	67
Atmospheric Sciences & Meteorology	10
Other Physical Science	4

Notes and References

• 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). More about our data sources and methodologies.