Graduate 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. The best graduate schools in Florida offer advanced degrees, such as master’s and doctoral degrees, as well as opportunities for independent research, mentorships, and professional networking.
Coming in under the national tuition average at $6,360, Florida’s colleges and universities make earning your degree affordable. Prospective students can choose from 40 public and 50 private institutions that award associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in fields like anthropology, nursing, law, religious studies, and earth sciences. 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.
There are 22 doctorate-granting graduate schools in California. The list below of the 25 best graduate schools in the state is composed of both private and public schools that satisfy the following three conditions:
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great. This is why influence gets at the heart of what is truly best in education. At the undergraduate level, the best colleges and universities are those with the highest concentration of influence. Our Concentrated Influence metric adjusts overall influence by size of undergraduate student body, thus allowing smaller schools to compete with larger schools so long as they have proportionately as strong influential faculty and alums.
But at the graduate level, the combined influence score of a college or university’s top academic influencers is the best indicator of academic excellence. Overall influence, and not influence controlled by other variables, thus becomes the best gauge of academic excellence at the graduate level. Where smaller size is an advantage at the undergraduate level (hence Concentrated Influence), graduate studies benefit from a large and vibrant community of graduate students, who promise to become the new generation of academic influencers.
If you are serious about finding the best graduate schools, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching, and whether their graduates themselves are advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence. Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Influence, as measured by our InfluenceRanking engine, provides a ranking that is free from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
Find out more about our methodology here.
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
31%
Graduation
89%
Student body
47K
Median SAT/ACT
1390/30
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University of Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$54K
Acceptance
33%
Graduation
83%
Student body
15K
Median SAT/ACT
1355/30
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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
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Florida State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$33K
Acceptance
76%
Graduation
62%
Student body
14K
Median SAT/ACT
1175/24
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Nova Southeastern University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
49%
Graduation
74%
Student body
44K
Median SAT/ACT
1250/27
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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
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Florida International University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
45%
Graduation
74%
Student body
60K
Median SAT/ACT
1255/27
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University of Central Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$43K
Acceptance
70%
Graduation
60%
Student body
5K
Median SAT/ACT
1255/27
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Florida Institute of Technology’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$31K
Acceptance
65%
Graduation
36%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1005/19
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Barry University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Acceptance
75%
Graduation
56%
Student body
26K
Median SAT/ACT
1160/24
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Florida Atlantic University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$33K
Acceptance
60%
Graduation
35%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
990/19
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St. Thomas University ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$54K
Acceptance
61%
Graduation
81%
Student body
3K
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Rollins College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
33%
Graduation
55%
Student body
8K
Median SAT/ACT
1095/21
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Florida A&M University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
58%
Graduation
48%
Student body
10K
Median SAT/ACT
1170/25
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University of West Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$40K
Acceptance
78%
Graduation
51%
Student body
4K
Median SAT/ACT
1035/21
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Jacksonville University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$40K
Acceptance
79%
Graduation
59%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1075/23
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Lynn University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$25K
Acceptance
73%
Graduation
50%
Student body
10K
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Saint Leo University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
66%
Student body
15K
Median SAT/ACT
1175/22
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University of North Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
70%
Graduation
64%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
1270/28
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New College of Florida’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$50K
Acceptance
81%
Graduation
64%
Student body
4K
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Stetson University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$39K
Acceptance
50%
Graduation
68%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1192/26
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Florida Southern College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$23K
Acceptance
92%
Graduation
53%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1135/24
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Ave Maria University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
98%
Graduation
33%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
925/16
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Bethune–Cookman University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$33K
Acceptance
92%
Graduation
57%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1090/23
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Palm Beach Atlantic University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$28K
Acceptance
43%
Graduation
48%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1060/21
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Southeastern University ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
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