The best grad schools in Florida offer advanced degrees, such as master’s and doctoral degrees, as well as opportunities for independent research, mentorships, and professional networking. Grad school may be a critical step in your higher education, whether you are interested in expanding your knowledge, learning a specialization, or earning advanced credentials required by your profession.
Coming in under the national tuition average at $6,360, Florida’s colleges and universities make earning your degree affordable. Prospective students in Florida can choose from 40 public and 50 private colleges that award associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in fields like anthropology, nursing, law, religious studies, and earth sciences. Nearly 40 colleges and universities in Florida offer online degrees that provide extra flexibility for educational opportunities. With over 165,000 students across eight campuses and 21 outreach centers, Miami Dade College is the largest public college in the state with a tuition of $3,000.
Find college admissions consultants in your state.
Students seeking a religious school can choose from 21 colleges and universities that are grounded in Judeo-Christian, Catholic, Seventh-day Adventist, and Christian principals. Ranked as the top two schools, the University of Florida (UF) and Florida State University (FSU) both have large student populations, with just over 45,000 at UF and just under 39,000 as FSU. Both are also affordable, with tuition at $6,000 and $7,000, respectively.
At $50,000, the University of Miami is the most expensive private college in the state and has graduated influential people, such as Gene Roddenberry, Sylvester Stallone, and Dwayne The Rock
Johnson. Florida also offers its nursing students up to $4,000 in loan forgiveness through their Nursing Student Loan Forgiveness Program.
Coastal cities, sandy beaches, orange groves, and vibrant flowers — it’s no wonder Florida is called The Sunshine State. Home to the famous Everglades National Park and Disney World, Florida also boasts 90 higher education institutes.
With so many options and in such a beautiful setting, Florida has a lot to offer higher education students. Check out Florida’s best degree programs and top career paths.
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great! If you are serious about finding the best colleges and universities for a bachelor’s degree, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching and whether their graduates are themselves advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence in their fields of study.
Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Concentrated Influence provides a ranking that is freer from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
To rank the influence of schools, we first determine the influence of scholars and professionals based on the number of citations and publications they have had over the past 10 years. In addition to publications and citations, we consider the web links to and from these sources, and the page views of those sources. We then match the influential people to their alma maters and institutions of employment, so that their influence is attributed to those schools. Our machine-learning Influence Ranking algorithm produces a numerical score of academic achievements, merits, and citations across Wikipedia, wikidata, Crossref, Semantic Scholar and an ever-growing body of data. If you are interested in exploring how and why we rank by influence, explore our methodology in more depth.
There are 23 doctorate-granting graduate schools in Florida. Our ranking of the best graduate schools in the Florida is composed of both private and public schools. To be included, schools must be fully accredited non-profit institutions, and must offer doctoral degrees and a broad array of graduate degrees.
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
31%
Graduation
89%
Student body
47K
Median SAT/ACT
1390/30
University of Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$55K
Acceptance
33%
Graduation
83%
Student body
15K
Median SAT/ACT
1355/30
University of Miami’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
32%
Graduation
84%
Student body
40K
Median SAT/ACT
1270/28
Florida State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
45%
Graduation
74%
Student body
60K
Median SAT/ACT
1255/27
University of Central Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
49%
Graduation
74%
Student body
44K
Median SAT/ACT
1250/27
University of South Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
58%
Graduation
67%
Student body
48K
Median SAT/ACT
1195/25
Florida International University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Acceptance
75%
Graduation
56%
Student body
26K
Median SAT/ACT
1160/24
Florida Atlantic University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$43K
Acceptance
70%
Graduation
60%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
1255/27
Florida Institute of Technology’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
33%
Graduation
55%
Student body
8K
Median SAT/ACT
1095/21
Florida A&M University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$35K
Acceptance
76%
Graduation
62%
Student body
14K
Median SAT/ACT
1175/24
Nova Southeastern University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$55K
Acceptance
61%
Graduation
81%
Student body
3K
Rollins College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
66%
Student body
15K
Median SAT/ACT
1175/22
University of North Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$32K
Acceptance
65%
Graduation
36%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1005/19
Barry University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
58%
Graduation
48%
Student body
10K
Median SAT/ACT
1170/25
University of West Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$39K
Acceptance
50%
Graduation
68%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1192/26
Florida Southern College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$22K
Acceptance
97%
Graduation
71%
Student body
29K
Keiser University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
63%
Graduation
23%
Student body
9K
Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
53%
Student body
13K
Median SAT/ACT
1135/23
Florida Gulf Coast University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$26K
Acceptance
73%
Graduation
50%
Student body
10K
Saint Leo University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$33K
Acceptance
60%
Graduation
35%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
990/19
St. Thomas University ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$41K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
59%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1075/23
Lynn University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$28K
Acceptance
43%
Graduation
48%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1060/21
Southeastern University ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$39K
Acceptance
61%
Graduation
62%
Student body
7K
Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Many of our 2022 undergraduate focused rankings look considerably different than 2021. That’s because we took a fundamentally different apporach. For 2021 we utiulized our Concentrated Influence algorithm, designed to take away the size advantage larger schools have when we rank their faculty and alumni’s academic influence. Concentrated influence highlights smaller schools that are proportionally as successful as larger universities at cultivating influential alumni and faculty.
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