Public health is one of the fastest-growing undergraduate majors in the United States, driven by rising student awareness of population health, healthcare systems, health equity, and the role of scientific evidence in addressing disease at the community and societal level. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that interest sharply, as millions of Americans observed firsthand the consequences of strong and weak public health infrastructure. A public health undergraduate degree provides training in epidemiology, biostatistics, environmental health, health policy, community health, and the behavioral and social dimensions of health, a combination of analytical rigor and social purpose that attracts students across a wide range of career aspirations.
Roughly 17,900 public health bachelor’s degrees are awarded annually in the United States (CIP 51.22), across 232 programs that meet our inclusion threshold and have sufficient data to score. That makes public health a mid-sized field by our standards, larger than statistics or neuroscience and smaller than biology. The field is also unusually concentrated in large public research universities, which serve significant portions of the national student population in health-adjacent fields.
College Transitions has developed a data-driven ranking of the top 100 undergraduate public health programs, applying the same five-component methodology used across this ranking series.
How We Built the Ranking
The approach evaluates all 232 scoreable institutions across five components.
| Component | Weight | Data Source / Notes |
| Major Emphasis | 12% | IPEDS Degree Completions (CIP 51.22) |
| Program Scale | 13% | IPEDS Degree Completions (log) |
| Academic Rating | 30% | IPEDS / Common Data Set |
| Earnings & ROI (Tier 2) | 25% | Inst. earnings 55% + ROI 20yr 22.5% + ROI 40yr 22.5%. Field earnings excluded: 44.9% coverage, below the 50% Tier 1 threshold |
| PhD Productivity | 20% | NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates: “Public health” field |
Why Tier 2 for public health? College Scorecard field-of-study earnings for public health graduates are available for just 44.9 percent of programs in the universe, below the 50 percent threshold that triggers Tier 1 treatment. This reflects two structural features of the field. First, many public health programs have graduating cohorts that fall below the roughly 30-student Scorecard disclosure threshold. Second, a substantial share of public health graduates proceed to MPH programs, medical school, or government service within two years of graduation, leaving a direct-employment cohort too small for disclosure. Under Tier 2, the Earnings & ROI component reflects institutional 10-year earnings (55 percent) and Georgetown CEW return-on-investment figures (22.5 percent each at 20 and 40 years), signals available for all programs that capture the long-run economic value of the institution’s degrees.
NSF PhD field. We use “Public health,” the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates field for doctoral recipients in public health, including epidemiology, environmental health sciences, health behavior, health policy and management, and biostatistics when completed within a school of public health. Biostatistics PhDs completed within mathematics or statistics departments are captured under different NSF fields, so this ranking’s PhD Productivity score reflects the public health doctoral pipeline specifically.
The Top 25
The top 25 programs are shown below. The public health ranking has a notable concentration of large public research universities alongside prominent private institutions with deep public health school affiliations. The field is unusual within this ranking series for how many of its top programs are flagship state universities with major schools of public health, rather than the elite private research universities and liberal arts colleges that dominate the top tiers of most other fields.
| Rank | Institution | State | Type | Score |
| 1 | Johns Hopkins University | MD | Private | 93.0 |
| 2 | University of Maryland-College Park | MD | Public | 89.2 |
| 3 | Tufts University | MA | Private | 87.9 |
| 4 | George Washington University | DC | Private | 87.2 |
| 5 | University of Southern California | CA | Private | 86.3 |
| 6 | University of California-Irvine | CA | Public | 85.9 |
| 7 | University of California-San Diego | CA | Public | 85.2 |
| 8 | University of Florida | FL | Public | 84.3 |
| 9 | University of California-Berkeley | CA | Public | 83.9 |
| 10 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor | MI | Public | 82.6 |
| 11 | University of Massachusetts-Amherst | MA | Public | 81.2 |
| 12 | Santa Clara University | CA | Private | 80.7 |
| 13 | University of Washington-Seattle | WA | Public | 80.5 |
| 14 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick | NJ | Public | 80.4 |
| 15 | American University | DC | Private | 80.0 |
| 16 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | IL | Public | 80.0 |
| 17 | Georgetown University | DC | Private | 79.8 |
| 18 | Cornell University | NY | Private | 79.8 |
| 19 | University of Delaware | DE | Public | 79.7 |
| 20 | Brown University | RI | Private | 79.4 |
| 21 | Franklin and Marshall College | PA | Liberal Arts | 78.7 |
| 22 | Lehigh University | PA | Private | 78.1 |
| 23 | University of Georgia | GA | Public | 78.0 |
| 24 | Florida State University | FL | Public | 76.4 |
| 25 | Syracuse University | NY | Private | 76.1 |
Table 1. Top 25 Undergraduate Public Health Programs, 2026 College Transitions Ranking. All programs use Tier 2 C4.
Johns Hopkins University (#1, 93.0) scores a near-perfect 99.6 on Major Emphasis, the highest in the public health universe, reflecting that public health accounts for a larger fraction of total degrees at Johns Hopkins than at any other institution in the dataset. JHU is constituted around the biological sciences, medicine, and public health in ways that no other research university replicates. Its Bloomberg School of Public Health, the oldest and largest school of public health in the world, creates an undergraduate research environment of real depth, exposing students directly to faculty engaged in global health, epidemiology, biostatistics, and health policy at the highest level. Its PhD Productivity score (98.8, reflecting 44 public health doctoral recipients at 7.2 per capita, the highest per-capita rate among large programs) and Earnings & ROI (96.8, reflecting institutional earnings of $87,555 and strong long-run ROI) complete the profile.
University of Maryland-College Park (#2, 89.2) leads all public universities and scores a near-perfect 99.6 on Program Scale (1,262 public health degrees over three years, among the largest programs nationally), 92.2 on Major Emphasis, and 93.5 on PhD Productivity. Maryland’s School of Public Health, established in 2008, has grown quickly into one of the strongest undergraduate public health environments in the country, aided by its proximity to federal health agencies in the Washington area. The National Institutes of Health, the CDC’s Washington offices, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Health Resources and Services Administration are all within commuting distance and provide strong internship and research opportunities for Maryland undergraduates.
Tufts University (#3, 87.9) achieves the second-highest PhD Productivity score in the ranking (98.6, reflecting 44 public health doctoral recipients at 6.4 per capita, the second-highest per-capita rate in the dataset). Tufts’ public health program benefits from its affiliation with the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and Tufts Medical Center, creating a biomedical research environment of unusual depth for an undergraduate public health program. Its Academic Rating of 88.3 reflects strong overall institutional quality, and its Earnings & ROI of 90.9 reflects the Boston labor market premium for health-sector graduates.
George Washington University (#4, 87.2) scores 87.5 on Major Emphasis (public health is central to GWU’s educational identity in Washington) and 96.3 on Earnings & ROI, reflecting institutional earnings of $90,873, the highest among programs ranked fourth through tenth, driven by the D.C. government and health policy labor market premium. GWU’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, located blocks from the White House and the headquarters of major federal health agencies, provides students with direct access to health policy internships, congressional health staff, and the full ecosystem of D.C. public health infrastructure.
Cornell (#18, 79.8) presents one of the most analytically interesting profiles in the top 25. Cornell scores just 17.7 on Major Emphasis (public health is a very small fraction of Cornell’s total degrees) and 47.4 on Program Scale, yet ranks 18th on the strength of a 91.0 Academic Rating, 99.2 on Earnings & ROI ($104,043 institutional earnings, among the highest in the dataset), and 97.0 on PhD Productivity (48 public health doctoral recipients at 3.0 per capita). Cornell’s Department of Global Development and its population medicine programs, connected to Weill Cornell Medicine and the College of Human Ecology, provide small but research-intensive environments for undergraduates interested in health equity, global public health, and the intersection of food systems and human health.
Brown University (#20, 79.4) follows the same pattern as Cornell: very low Major Emphasis (27.6) and Program Scale (32.5), but a strong Academic Rating (93.4, among the highest in the dataset), 97.5 on Earnings & ROI ($93,487 institutional earnings), and 97.4 on PhD Productivity (38 public health doctoral recipients at 4.9 per capita). Brown’s public health program, housed in the School of Public Health established in 2013, has developed quickly into a research-intensive environment with particular strengths in epidemiology, behavioral health, and health equity.
What Separates the Best Programs?
The D.C. Advantage: George Washington, Georgetown, and American
Washington, D.C. is the most concentrated location for public health career opportunities in the United States. The federal health infrastructure (NIH, CDC, FDA, HRSA, AHRQ, CMS, SAMHSA), combined with major global health organizations (PAHO, World Bank Health, USAID), congressional health staff, health think tanks (Urban Institute, Brookings, RAND), and the advocacy ecosystem create an internship and employment environment for public health students that no other geography replicates.
George Washington (#4), Georgetown (#17), and American University (#15) all benefit from that ecosystem. Georgetown’s 98.8 Earnings & ROI (among the highest in the dataset, reflecting institutional earnings of $103,494) and 95.9 PhD Productivity score (28 doctoral recipients at 3.5 per capita) make it a strong option for students interested in public health policy and global health. American University’s School of International Service provides an unusual combination of public health, international development, and policy coursework that is difficult to replicate elsewhere.
The UC System: Scale and Research Depth
UC Irvine (#6) and UC San Diego (#7) lead the UC system in the public health ranking. Both score above 97 on Program Scale; UC Irvine awarded 1,243 public health degrees over three years, UC San Diego 932. The UC system’s advantage in this ranking is structural. California’s large and diverse population creates public health research opportunities in environmental health, minority health disparities, infectious disease, and chronic disease management that few states can match. UC Berkeley (#9) scores 97.6 on PhD Productivity (89 public health doctoral recipients, the highest raw count in the scoreable dataset) and 97.5 on Earnings & ROI ($92,446 institutional earnings, reflecting the Bay Area premium), but its lower Major Emphasis (53.4) and Program Scale (91.4) reflect that public health is a relatively smaller fraction of Berkeley’s very large total degree output.
Franklin & Marshall and the Small College Surprise
Franklin and Marshall College (#21, 78.7) is the ranking’s most unexpected result. F&M scores 94.4 on Major Emphasis (public health is central to its curriculum relative to its small total degree volume), 84.6 on Academic Rating, and 89.2 on Earnings & ROI. The college has built a serious public health program in the liberal arts tradition, emphasizing the social determinants of health, health equity research, and community engagement in ways that complement the quantitative and biomedical orientation of larger programs. For students who want a rigorous, discussion-based public health education within a small residential environment rather than a large research university, F&M is the most prominent option in this ranking.
Patterns, Themes, and What They Mean for Your Students
The MPH question is the central career consideration for public health undergraduates. Most career paths in public health, including epidemiology, health policy, health administration, environmental health, and global health, eventually require a graduate degree. The Master of Public Health is the standard professional credential, and many undergraduates treat the bachelor’s degree as preparation for that graduate study. Counselors should help students understand that undergraduate public health programs vary considerably in how explicitly they are designed as pre-MPH preparation versus terminal professional degrees. Programs at Johns Hopkins, Brown, Cornell, Tufts, and Georgetown tend to attract students with clear graduate school intentions; programs at large public universities like Maryland, UC Irvine, and UMass tend to serve a more mixed population with both direct-employment and graduate school goals. The PhD Productivity score in this ranking measures the research pipeline specifically; it does not capture MPH placement, which is the more common graduate pathway for public health undergraduates.
Location relative to federal and state health agencies is a real differentiator. The D.C. programs (GWU, Georgetown, American) offer internship access that programs elsewhere cannot replicate. But proximity to state health departments, major academic medical centers, and regional health systems matters too. Programs at Maryland, Michigan, UNC Chapel Hill, Minnesota, and Wisconsin benefit from close relationships with their state health departments and from being embedded in academic medical center ecosystems. Students should ask specifically about practicum and internship placement rates, and about which federal or state agencies regularly recruit from the program.
In public health, institutional prestige correlates strongly with research opportunity but not perfectly with career placement. A student who graduates from UMass Amherst or Rutgers with strong epidemiology skills, a practicum placement at a state health department, and a clear application to a top MPH program is on a strong career trajectory, arguably stronger than a student from a more selective institution who did not engage deeply with the field. The Academic Rating component in this ranking reflects the overall institutional environment, not the specific quality of public health faculty or curriculum. Programs that score high on Major Emphasis and PhD Productivity, which indicate real departmental investment and research culture, are likely to provide stronger field-specific preparation than programs that rank high primarily on institutional prestige. Counselors should weight these field-specific signals heavily for public health.
Public health is the discipline that connects scientific knowledge to human welfare at the population level. The programs that lead this ranking have built the research environments, faculty depth, agency partnerships, and community connections that make substantive engagement with population health possible for undergraduates. Students who choose carefully, attending to program depth, geographic positioning, practicum infrastructure, and graduate school preparation alongside institutional prestige, will find a field with growing career prospects and a depth of purpose that few undergraduate majors can match.
