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Major · Biological & Biomedical Sciences

Field, lab, and phylogeny — biology with a deep-time lens

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) sits at the intersection of how species interact today and how they got here over millions of years. Around 597 students complete it each year across 35 U.S. colleges, with five-year median earnings near $50,500 and a strong tilt toward graduate school as the actual career credential.

Schools offering
35
Annual completions
597
Typical degree level
Bachelor's
Median earnings (5yr)
$50k

About this major

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology is the synthesis biology major — half the systems-and-community lens of how organisms interact across landscapes today, half the deep-time lens of how those organisms got there through selection, drift, and speciation. The CIP definition explicitly names instruction in animal, plant, population, functional, evolutionary, and ecosystem ecology; ecological and evolutionary genetics; molecular evolution; population and conservation biology; biometry; and research ethics. In practice, EEB programs alternate between field plots and sequencing labs: a semester might pair a community-ecology field course with a phylogenetics module that has students assembling and analyzing molecular trees in R.

The coursework leans quantitative more than a Biology, General degree does. Calculus, statistics, and at least one scripting language (R is dominant; Python increasingly common) are baseline expectations. Phylogenetic comparative methods, occupancy modeling, Bayesian inference, and bioinformatic analysis of sequence data are standard upper-division content at the research-flagship producers. Field-station summers — Rocky Mountain Biological Lab, Mountain Lake, Hubbard Brook, Bodega Marine Lab, the OTS courses in Costa Rica — are the unspoken curriculum that admissions committees for PhD programs read most closely.

Producer concentration tells a story. CU Boulder graduates 158 EEB students a year — over a quarter of the entire national output — followed by Michigan (46), UT El Paso (37), Princeton (34), Colorado College (33), UC Davis (30), BYU (30), Kansas (30), Central Michigan (29), and Pittsburgh (27). The list is not a clean elite-private skew; it mixes large flagship publics with strong field-station infrastructure, an HSI R1 (UTEP), a top liberal-arts college (Colorado College), and a couple of elite privates (Princeton, Michigan). What the producers share is institutional capacity for the experiences that matter — REUs, senior theses, faculty-supervised research — rather than name-brand prestige alone.

The career table is honest about the credential ceiling. Conservation Scientists at $67,950 and Biological Scientists, All Other at $93,330 are bachelor's-eligible on paper, while the two postsecondary-teaching tracks ($83,460 for Biological Sciences faculty, $87,710 for Environmental Sciences faculty) and Natural Sciences Managers at $161,180 sit behind doctoral or extensive-experience gates. The five-year median earnings of about $50,500 reflect that most graduates are in seasonal field-tech, lab-tech, or first-year graduate-student stipend territory, not yet in permanent professional positions.

Section 3 · Careers

Where this major leads

Occupations most often associated with this major, from the federal BLS+O*NET crosswalk. Job-growth projections and median wages are national.

Occupation Median wage Job growth Typical education
Natural sciences managers $161k +3.7% Bachelor's degree
Biological science teachers, postsecondary $83k +7.3% Doctoral or professional degree
Biological scientists, all other $93k +1.2% Bachelor's degree
Conservation scientists $68k +3.4% Bachelor's degree
Environmental science teachers, postsecondary $88k +2.9% Doctoral or professional degree
Section 4 · Earnings

Earnings at a glance

Median graduate earnings from the federal College Scorecard, 5 and 10 years out.

Median 5-year earnings

$50k

Who this major is for

You may thrive here if you genuinely enjoy both messy outdoor data collection and quiet hours staring at sequence alignments or R output, if you find evolutionary questions — why this trait, why this species, why now — as interesting as ecological ones, if you're willing to stack quantitative skills (statistics, R, Python, GIS, phylogenetic inference) on top of natural history because the field rewards quantitative biologists more than naturalists alone, if a trajectory of one or two paid field seasons followed by a 5–6 year funded PhD program with a $32,000–$45,000 stipend reads as the actual career path rather than as a delay, and if you find federal-agency conservation work or research-faculty teaching more meaningful than maximum near-term salary.

Think twice if you want a clean linear job pipeline straight out of a bachelor's — five-year median earnings near $50,500 reflect that most graduates land in term or seasonal positions, not permanent professional roles; if you can't or don't want to commit to graduate school for 2 to 6 more years; if relocating annually for federal seasonals or moving across the country for a PhD program sounds untenable; if you prefer cellular or biomedical biology, in which case Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, or Cell/Molecular Biology are closer fits; or if your real interest is policy and advocacy rather than data and research — Environmental Studies (CIP 03.0103) often serves that goal better. The EEB bachelor's is best read as a pre-PhD ramp: an excellent one if that's the trajectory you want, an expensive one if it isn't.

Section 6 · Where to study

Top colleges for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Ranked by annual completions at the associate's or bachelor's level — a proxy for program scale.

College Location Assoc. Bach. Total
University of Colorado Boulder Boulder, CO 0 158 158
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI 0 46 46
The University of Texas at El Paso El Paso, TX 0 37 37
Princeton University Princeton, NJ 0 34 34
Colorado College Colorado Springs, CO 0 33 33
University of California-Davis Davis, CA 0 30 30
Brigham Young University Provo, UT 0 30 30
University of Kansas Lawrence, KS 0 30 30
Central Michigan University Mount Pleasant, MI 0 29 29
University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus Pittsburgh, PA 0 27 27
Section 7 · Explore sideways

Related majors to explore

Biology/Biological Sciences, General

83,027 completions/yr

Neuroscience

9,625 completions/yr

Biochemistry

8,736 completions/yr

Cell/Cellular and Molecular Biology

3,392 completions/yr

Nutrition Sciences

3,240 completions/yr

Microbiology, General

2,120 completions/yr

Human Biology

2,094 completions/yr

Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Other

2,089 completions/yr
Section 9 · Frequently asked

Common questions

What do EEB majors actually study, and how is it different from a generic Biology degree?
EEB couples ecology's systems-and-fieldwork side (population dynamics, community structure, biogeochemistry, GIS, field methods) with evolutionary biology's deep-time and quantitative side (phylogenetics, population genetics, molecular evolution, paleobiology, comparative genomics). Day-to-day work splits between field plots — quadrats, transects, mist nets, water sampling — and molecular labs running PCR, sequencing prep, and bioinformatic pipelines in R or Python. Compared with Biology, General (CIP 26.0101), EEB is narrower and more research-flavored: less emphasis on cellular and biomedical content, more on whole-organism biology, evolutionary theory, and fieldwork.
What jobs do EEB graduates land with just a bachelor's, and what do they pay?
Honestly: most bachelor's-only graduates land in seasonal or term field-tech and lab-tech roles. Federal land-management agencies (USFS, NPS, USFWS, USGS, NOAA) hire biological science technicians at $35,000–$50,000, frequently term and frequently relocating annually. Private environmental consulting (AECOM, Stantec, ICF, GEI) tends to pay better at $45,000–$60,000 doing surveys, wetland delineations, and monitoring. Conservation NGOs (The Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, Audubon, National Wildlife Federation) hire field crews, GIS analysts, and stewardship coordinators in the same range. University genomics and ecology labs hire research technicians at $35,000–$50,000 — these are explicitly resume-builders for PhD applications.
Do I need a graduate degree to actually become an evolutionary biologist or ecologist?
Yes, for the title and the wage. The BLS lists Conservation Scientists at $67,950 and Biological Scientists, All Other at $93,330 as bachelor's-eligible on paper, but actual hiring competitions for permanent ecologist, geneticist, or evolutionary biologist positions treat a master's as the floor and a PhD as the standard. The two postsecondary teaching tracks tied to EEB — Biological Sciences ($83,460) and Environmental Sciences ($87,710) — are explicitly doctoral-only. The EEB bachelor's is best read as a pre-PhD ramp: you build field-station experience, an undergraduate REU or two, a senior thesis, and quantitative skills that get you into a funded MS or PhD program where the stipend ($32,000–$45,000 for 5–6 years) and tuition waiver are the real ROI.
What matters most for getting into a funded PhD program in EEB?
Research experience — measured in lab-and-field months, not GPA — is the single biggest admissions lever. Top-tier EEB PhD programs (Yale, Princeton, Michigan, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, Cornell) admit cohorts where nearly every entering student has at least one summer of field-station work (Mountain Lake, Rocky Mountain Biological Lab, Hubbard Brook, Bodega Marine Lab) plus a senior thesis or NSF REU on their CV. A 3.7 with two field seasons and a co-authored paper beats a 3.95 with neither. Quantitative skills (R, Python, occupancy modeling, Bayesian phylogenetics, remote sensing) are increasingly required — programs explicitly weight applicants who can already analyze data over those who say they want to learn.
How is EEB different from Ecology alone, Biology General, Marine Biology, or Zoology?
EEB (CIP 26.1310) explicitly bundles ecology with evolutionary biology — phylogenetics, population genetics, molecular evolution — and tilts research-university. Ecology alone (CIP 26.1301) drops the evolutionary half and skews more land-grant and fieldwork-applied. Biology, General (26.0101) is the broad biomedical-leaning umbrella that doesn't commit to either fieldwork or evolutionary theory. Marine Biology and Biological Oceanography (26.1302) is taxonomically and habitat-narrowed to oceans. Zoology and Animal Biology (26.0701) is organism-and-specimen-focused without the systems-and-time framing. The career endpoints overlap heavily for bachelor's holders, but the graduate-program pipelines diverge: EEB feeds elite research PhD programs more directly than the others.
Where do EEB graduates actually go to school, and what does the institution profile look like?
The producer profile is concentrated and research-heavy. CU Boulder dominates with 158 graduates a year — over a quarter of all U.S. EEB completions — followed by University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (46), UT El Paso (37), Princeton (34), Colorado College (33), UC Davis (30), BYU (30), Kansas (30), Central Michigan (29), and Pittsburgh (27). The list mixes elite research universities (Princeton, Michigan, UC Davis), large flagship publics with strong field stations (CU Boulder, Kansas, Pittsburgh), a top liberal-arts college (Colorado College), and a Hispanic-serving R1 (UTEP). The shared trait is field-station infrastructure and active EEB faculty research programs — the institutional features that matter most for getting into graduate school.