Physics is of the hottest doctor's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #16 most popular major in the country. 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 3 schools in Michigan to determine which ones were the best for physics students pursuing a doctor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 74 doctor's degrees in physics during the 2021-2022 academic year.
Choosing a Great Physics School for Your Doctor's Degree
The physics doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 account for this we include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
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 much a school focuses on physics students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of physics students who choose to seek a doctor's degree at the school.
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 physics 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 physics related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for physics 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 Physics Doctor's Degree Schools in Michigan list to help you make the college decision.
Best Schools for Doctorate Students to Study Physics in Michigan
Learn about the top ranked colleges and universities for physics students seeking a a doctor's degree.
It is hard to beat University of Michigan - Ann Arbor if you wish to pursue a doctor's degree in physics. Located in the medium-sized city of Ann Arbor, U-M is a public university with a very large student population.
Doctorate recipients from the physics degree program at University of Michigan - Ann Arbor earn $7,700 more than the standard graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Any student who is interested in a doctor's degree in physics needs to check out Michigan State University. Michigan State is a very large public university located in the city of East Lansing.
Doctorate graduates who receive their degree from the physics program make an average of $80,184 in the first couple 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).
The physics doctor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
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