#8 Sam Houston State University
Huntsville, Texas
One of the newest accredited forensic science grad programs in the country is number 8 on our list, Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.
Like most things in Texas, Sam Houston's forensics program does things big. How big? Let's say 44 whopping semester hours of work big, packed into a two-year program alongside a 10-week summer internship. That's 14 hours more than some other programs require for the same degree. But it makes sense when you consider that the program is located smack-dab in the middle of the school's new Chemistry and Forensic Science Building, an $18 million doosey of a facility that offers pretty much everything you could ever want in a lab. So really, you'd be crazy to leave Sam Houston with anything less than 44 hours of the kind of courses that are available to you.
Perhaps our favorite aspect of Sam Houston, though, is the strength of the school's criminal justice program, widely regarded as one of the finest in the United States. The sheer proximity of students studying law enforcement, under the long and faithful support of the state's Texas Department of Criminal Justice, means that your science education will not lose its tether to the criminal justice system, as can happen in lesser graduate programs. At Sam Houston, you'll never really lose sight of the fact that you're studying an applied science, relevant only to the extent to which it can help convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent.
