Best Grad Schools in Tennessee 2025

Badge for BEST IN TENNESSEE GRADUATE SCHOOLS

By Dr. James Barham
Reviewed By Jenn Finley

Updated: Nov 25, 2024

Key Takeaways

Fifteen schools in Tennessee meet our criteria for the best grad schools in the state.
Earning a master’s or doctorate degree from one of the state’s best grad schools will qualify graduates to work in one of Tennessee’s top industries.
It is important to choose a grad school in Tennessee that offers opportunities for independent research, mentorships, and professional networking.

Table of Contents

10 Best Grad Schools in Tennessee in 2025

Vanderbilt University
University of Tennessee
University of Memphis
Tennessee State University
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Middle Tennessee State University
East Tennessee State University
Lipscomb University
Lincoln Memorial University
Union University
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2025 Ranking Update

Our Influence Ranking Engine™ leverages machine learning to track the real-world influence of colleges and universities over time. Below you’ll see which schools gained or lost ground for the 2025 school year.

The top 5 schools in our 2025 ranking of the best grad schools in Tennessee remained the same this year. In fact, the only movement in the top 10 was Union University, which gained 1 spot to move into the top 10.

Vanderbilt University has launched the College of Connected Computing, Vanderbilt’s first new college in 40 years. Additionally, the School of Engineering now offers waived application fees for Ph.D. candidates and expanded graduate funding, including full tuition, stipends, and health insurance for doctoral students.

The University of Tennessee’s Tickle College of Engineering has expanded its facility by adding over 275,000 square feet of innovative research and learning spaces. Meanwhile, the College of Nursing and the Herbert College of Agriculture have also been recognized for their advanced curriculum, cutting-edge research, and commitment to addressing global challenges, particularly in biosystems engineering.

Colleges and Universities in Tennessee

About one third of the higher learning institutes in Tennessee are public schools. Students who attend these schools can expect to pay anywhere between $4,000 to $13,000 in tuition and have the option to pursue degrees in fields such as economics, history, nursing, literature, education, and criminal justice.

Tennessee’s largest public school, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, boasts some impressive alumni, including Oprah Winfrey, Kurt Vonnegut, and Cormac McCarthy. The private school alumni are equally as notable. For example, author James Patterson and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus both attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

Tennessee also offers students several loan forgiveness programs. Math and science teachers, minority teachers, and registered nurses interested in becoming teachers or administrators who meet certain requirements may be eligible.

Find college admissions consultants in your state.

What are Tennessee’s Colleges & Universities?

Tennessee’s Best Overall

How do we determine Tennessee's best grad schools?

Methodology

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 15 doctorate-granting graduate schools in Tennessee. Our ranking of the best graduate schools in the Tennessee 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.