Top Undergraduate Physics Programs

From 2015 through 2024, bachelor’s-degree alumni of the California Institute of Technology earned 171 research doctorates in physics and astronomy. Caltech enrolls 987 undergraduates. Set side by side, those two figures produce a rate of 173.3 doctorates per 1,000 undergraduate enrollment, more than double the next-highest rate among the top 100 programs in the 2026 College Transitions physics ranking, Harvey Mudd College’s 80.4. That rate is a size-normalized comparison, not the share of any graduating class that went on to a doctorate.

Count the same doctorates without adjusting for size and the list changes. The University of California, Berkeley, ranked 27th overall, has 368, the most among the top 100. No public university appears on the list until Berkeley at 27th.

That split between the rate and the count runs through this ranking. The sections below present the top 25, show how each of those programs earns its score, and then compare the two ways of reading the doctoral data, which point families toward different kinds of schools.

How the Ranking Scores Physics

The ranking covers the federal CIP 40.08 family, Physics. It includes 481 institutions that awarded at least eight physics bachelor’s degrees over fiscal years 2022 through 2024. Each institution receives a score from 0 to 100 on five components, and the weighted sum of those scores is its composite. Major Emphasis and Program Scale are straight percentile ranks across all 481 programs. The other three components combine several measures that are each ranked across the 481, so their highest values can fall below 100. Academic Rating, for example, tops out at Princeton’s 94.2, and PhD Productivity at MIT’s 99.7.

Component	Weight	What it measures	Source and years
Major Emphasis	12%	Physics degrees as a share of all bachelor’s degrees the institution awarded	IPEDS Completions, 2022 to 2024
Program Scale	13%	Number of physics bachelor’s degrees (log scale)	IPEDS Completions, 2022 to 2024
Academic Rating	30%	Nine indicators: SAT/ACT midpoint, retention, graduation rate, student-faculty ratio, share of classes under 20, professor salary, graduation rate relative to prediction, full-time faculty share, terminal-degree share	IPEDS; College Transitions Common Data Set panel
Earnings & ROI	25%	Institution-wide median earnings 10 years after entry (55%); institution-level ROI at 20 years (22.5%) and 40 years (22.5%). No physics-specific earnings.	College Scorecard; Georgetown CEW
PhD Productivity	20%	Physics and astronomy research doctorates earned by the institution’s bachelor’s-degree alumni, half raw count and half rate per 1,000 undergraduate enrollment	NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2015 to 2024

Table 1. Ranking components, weights and data sources.

Two scoring rules shape the physics results more than they shape other fields in this series.

First, no physics-specific earnings data are used in the score. College Scorecard withholds field-level earnings for small graduating groups, and by the ranking’s methodology more than 84 percent of physics programs lack a published figure. Rather than fill those gaps with a median, the physics ranking drops field earnings and builds the component entirely from institution-wide measures. A school’s Earnings & ROI score therefore describes all of its graduates, not its physics majors.

Second, a program with no record in the National Science Foundation’s doctoral data scores zero on PhD Productivity. In physics, 117 of the 481 programs are in that position. Two are in the top 100, Georgia Tech (96th) and Columbia (99th). Several of the largest physics departments in the country sit below it for the same reason, including the University of Texas at Austin (139th), the University of Washington (147th), Purdue (162nd), Penn State (233rd) and Ohio State (237th). Each of those five scores above 95 on Program Scale. A zero means no doctorates were matched to the institution in the file used for this ranking. It should not be read as evidence that none of its graduates went on to earn one.

The Top 25

MIT leads at 95.7, followed by Princeton at 95.2 and Caltech at 94.8. Harvard (94.6) and the University of Chicago (94.5) complete the top five, and Harvey Mudd, a college of 921 undergraduates, is sixth. Ranks are set on unrounded scores, so three pairs that display the same composite are still ordered: Cornell above Brown at 90.2, Rice above Johns Hopkins at 85.5, and Duke (25th) above Northwestern (26th) at 84.6.

Rank	Institution	State	Type	Physics degrees, 2022-24	Score
1	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	MA	Private university	149	95.7
2	Princeton University	NJ	Private university	80	95.2
3	California Institute of Technology	CA	Private university	75	94.8
4	Harvard University	MA	Private university	113	94.6
5	University of Chicago	IL	Private university	144	94.5
6	Harvey Mudd College	CA	Liberal arts college	59	92.8
7	University of Pennsylvania	PA	Private university	141	92.6
8	Yale University	CT	Private university	82	91.8
9	Carnegie Mellon University	PA	Private university	79	91.6
10	Stanford University	CA	Private university	71	90.3
11	Cornell University	NY	Private university	118	90.2
12	Brown University	RI	Private university	74	90.2
13	University of Notre Dame	IN	Private university	84	89.3
14	Colgate University	NY	Liberal arts college	53	88.6
15	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute	NY	Private university	129	88.4
16	University of Rochester	NY	Private university	119	87.2
17	Haverford College	PA	Liberal arts college	50	86.7
18	Pomona College	CA	Liberal arts college	40	86.1
19	Bowdoin College	ME	Liberal arts college	38	85.9
20	Rice University	TX	Private university	33	85.5
21	Johns Hopkins University	MD	Private university	44	85.5
22	Wellesley College	MA	Liberal arts college	40	85.3
23	Swarthmore College	PA	Liberal arts college	24	85.1
24	Colby College	ME	Liberal arts college	43	84.9
25	Duke University	NC	Private university	34	84.6

Table 2. Top 25 undergraduate physics programs, 2026. Physics degrees are bachelor’s degrees under CIP 40.08, fiscal years 2022 through 2024. Source: College Transitions 2026 Undergraduate Physics Ranking; IPEDS Completions.

Seventeen of the top 25 are private universities and eight are liberal arts colleges: Harvey Mudd, Colgate, Haverford, Pomona, Bowdoin, Wellesley, Swarthmore and Colby. After Berkeley at 27th, the next public universities are UC Santa Barbara (29th) and the University of Virginia (32nd). Twenty-two public universities appear in the top 100.

Reading the Top 25 Across Five Components

A composite score hides the route a program took to reach it. Figure 1 lays out all five component scores for each top-25 program, with darker cells marking higher scores.

Figure 1. Component scores for the top 25 physics programs, each on a 0 to 100 scale relative to all 481 ranked programs. Source: College Transitions 2026 Undergraduate Physics Ranking.

Only two programs in the top 25 score 90 or higher on all five components, Harvard and the University of Chicago. Chicago’s weakest component is 92.1, the highest floor on the list. MIT, first overall, scores 97 or higher on four components and 87.7 on Academic Rating.

The lower half of Figure 1 shows how differently programs arrive at similar composites. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 15th, has the lowest Academic Rating in the top 25 at 69.1 and makes it up with 97.3 on Major Emphasis, 95.2 on Program Scale and 96.8 on PhD Productivity. Duke, 25th, runs the other direction. Its Academic Rating of 93.5 is second among all 481 programs, behind Princeton’s 94.2, but physics accounts for 34 of Duke’s 6,253 bachelor’s degrees over the three years, and its Major Emphasis score of 49.5 is the lowest in the top 25.

Major Emphasis rewards campuses where physics claims a large share of all bachelor’s degrees. Caltech holds the top score, 100, with 75 physics degrees out of 686 (10.9 percent). Harvey Mudd follows at 99.8 (9.1 percent) and Haverford at 99.6 (5.1 percent). For comparison, physics accounts for 4.5 percent of MIT’s bachelor’s degrees.

Swarthmore is the clearest case of a small program ranking well. It awarded 24 physics degrees over three years, the fewest in the top 25, which puts it at 53.0 on Program Scale. It still finishes 23rd, carried by a 90.1 Academic Rating and a 95.1 on PhD Productivity.

The Doctoral Pipeline, Measured Two Ways

PhD Productivity counts research doctorates in physics and astronomy earned from 2015 through 2024 by each institution’s bachelor’s-degree alumni. Half of the component comes from the raw count and half from the rate per 1,000 undergraduate enrollment. That rate is a size normalization, a 10-year count of doctorates divided by current enrollment. It is not the share of any graduating class that went on to a doctorate. Figure 2 ranks the top 100 by rate.

Figure 2. Physics and astronomy research doctorates per 1,000 undergraduate enrollment, 2015 through 2024, the 15 highest rates among top-100 programs. The raw count appears in parentheses. Source: NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates, as compiled in the College Transitions 2026 Undergraduate Physics Ranking.

Small institutions dominate the rate. Seven of the 15 highest rates belong to liberal arts colleges, and four of those rank outside the top 25 overall. Reed College, 88th, is fourth on the list at 38.1; Carleton (31st), Williams (35th) and Grinnell (50th) also appear. New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, ranked 78th, is the only public university in Figure 2, at 28.7 from 35 doctorates.

Figure 3 sorts the same top 100 by raw count.

Figure 3. Physics and astronomy research doctorates earned by bachelor’s-degree alumni, 2015 through 2024, the 15 largest counts among top-100 programs. Source: NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates, as compiled in the College Transitions 2026 Undergraduate Physics Ranking.

Berkeley’s 368 leads MIT’s 276 by 92. Cornell (232), Chicago (194) and Michigan (182) follow. Eight of the 15 largest counts belong to public universities, and four of those eight rank 65th or lower overall: Florida (65th), Wisconsin (68th), Minnesota (79th) and Colorado Boulder (84th), each with between 116 and 121 doctorates. Their rates are low because their enrollments are large. Minnesota’s 121 doctorates work out to 3.1 per 1,000 undergraduate enrollment.

Six programs appear on both lists: MIT, Caltech, Chicago, Princeton, Harvard and Rochester. All six are private universities ranked 16th or higher.

For a family, the two figures answer different questions. The rate says how often doctorate recipients trace back to a campus relative to its size, which favors places where physics students are a visible share of a small student body. The count says how many physics doctorate recipients a campus has produced in total, which favors large departments with many classmates heading the same way. Neither predicts any one student’s path to graduate school.

Public Universities Lead on Scale

The public programs in the top 100 are built differently from the private ones. Their median Program Scale score is 95.9, against 82.0 for private universities and 68.6 for liberal arts colleges. UC Santa Barbara awarded 469 physics bachelor’s degrees over the three years, the most of any program in the ranking, and holds the only perfect Program Scale score. Berkeley (249), UCLA (229) and UC Irvine (229) come next among the top 100.

The gap opens on Academic Rating, the heaviest component at 30 percent. The median public program in the top 100 scores 67.2, while private universities and liberal arts colleges both sit near 82. Berkeley’s profile shows the effect. It scores 99.4 on Program Scale, 96.8 on PhD Productivity and 94.2 on Earnings & ROI, and 67.7 on Academic Rating. That combination lands it at 27th.

Academic Rating is built from institution-wide measures such as graduation rates, class sizes and student-faculty ratios. It describes the campus, not the physics department. A student comparing a large public program with a private one can read Program Scale and the doctoral count directly and weigh them separately from the composite.

The zero PhD Productivity scores described earlier fall hardest on this group. Any doctorates matched to Texas, Washington, Purdue, Penn State or Ohio State would raise their PhD Productivity scores. As scored, none of the five appears in the top 100.

Earnings Data in Physics Is Institution-Wide

Because field earnings are dropped, the Earnings & ROI component for physics comes from three institution-level measures: College Scorecard median earnings 10 years after entry for former students who are working and not enrolled (55 percent), and Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce net return on investment at 20 years (22.5 percent) and 40 years (22.5 percent).

MIT has the only perfect Earnings & ROI score, backed by an institution-wide median of $143,372. Harvey Mudd follows at 99.8 ($138,687), then Caltech at 99.5 ($128,566), Stanford at 99.2 ($124,080), and Princeton and Penn at 99.1. Stevens Institute of Technology, ranked 48th overall, scores 98.3.

Liberal arts colleges have the lowest median Earnings & ROI score of the three groups in the top 100, 76.7, compared with 85.1 for public universities and 94.0 for private universities. Pomona (81.9) and Bowdoin (82.5) have the lowest Earnings & ROI scores in the top 25.

None of these figures describes physics graduates specifically. They combine every major on campus, so a school with a large engineering or business enrollment can post higher institution-wide earnings than one where most students major in the humanities, whatever its physics majors earn. The ranking file does include Scorecard’s physics-specific medians where they are published, for 30 of the top 100 programs, but they carry no weight in the score and are not compared here.

What the Ranking Cannot Tell a Physics Student

Each component answers a narrow question. The table below pairs what the ranking measures with a question it leaves open, one a student or counselor can take to a physics department directly.

The ranking measures	Ask the department
How many physics bachelor’s degrees the school awards, and what share of all degrees they represent	How many upper-level physics courses run each term, and how often each elective is offered
Institution-wide class sizes, graduation rates and faculty indicators	What class sizes look like in physics courses after the introductory sequence
Physics and astronomy doctorates earned by alumni, as a count and as a rate	How many physics majors do research with faculty before graduating, and how students are matched to projects
Earnings and return on investment for all graduates of the institution	What recent physics graduates did in the year after finishing, including jobs and graduate programs
Nothing about concentrations or tracks	Whether the department offers astrophysics, engineering physics, biophysics or a teaching track

Table 3. What the ranking measures and what to ask each physics department.

The composite is a general comparison across the dimensions this ranking measures. For a student set on graduate school in physics, the doctoral rate and count in Figures 2 and 3 carry more information than the overall rank. For a student weighing a large public university, the zero-score records and the institution-wide Academic Rating mean the published rank understates what the department itself may offer.

Data sources: College Transitions 2026 Undergraduate Physics Ranking. IPEDS Completions, CIP 40.08 (Physics), bachelor’s degrees, fiscal years 2022 through 2024. U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, institution-level median earnings of former students working and not enrolled 10 years after entry. Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, institution-level net return on investment at 20 and 40 years, most recent available year. National Science Foundation, Survey of Earned Doctorates, physics and astronomy research doctorates, 2015 through 2024, by baccalaureate-origin institution. Academic Rating indicators from IPEDS and the College Transitions Common Data Set panel. Universe: 481 institutions awarding at least eight physics bachelor’s degrees over 2022 through 2024. All component scores are computed relative to the full universe. Public or private control and liberal arts classification reflect the institution as a whole.