Zare earned his BA in chemistry and physics in 1961 and his PhD in 1964 in physical and analytical chemistry at Harvard University. As an undergraduate he worked with William Klemperer. Zare moved to the University of California, Berkeley to do PhD work with Dudley Herschbach, then returned 2 years later when Herschbach accepted a position at Harvard. Zare completed his PhD thesis, a theoretical analysis of Molecular fluorescence and photodissociation, with Herschbach at Harvard in 1964.