When it comes to popularity, a master's degree in animal science sits in the middle of the road, ranking #163 out of 343 majors in the country. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Animal Science Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 90 master's degrees in animal science during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Animal Science School for Your Master's Degree
The animal science master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality animal science program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to animal science students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of animal science students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How easy is it for animal science to pay back their student loans after receiving their master's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized animal science related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for animal science students working on their master's degree.
The animal science school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Animal Science Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region.
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Any student who is interested in a master's degree in animal science needs to check out University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Located in the city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the animal science program state that they receive average early career income of $55,258.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
The animal science master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality animal science program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
