If you pursue a master's degree in accounting, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #10 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
College Factual reviewed 20 schools in California to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of accounting. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 742 master's degrees in accounting during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Accounting School for Your Master's Degree
The accounting master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 accounting students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of accounting 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 much debt accounting students go into to obtain their master's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized accounting related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for accounting students working on their master's degree.
The accounting 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 Accounting Master's Degree Schools in California.
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It's difficult to beat Saint Mary's College of California if you wish to pursue a master's degree in accounting. SMC is a small private not-for-profit college located in the suburb of Moraga.
Those accounting students who get their master's degree from Saint Mary's College of California make $4,631 more than the standard accounting graduate.
University of California - Davis is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in accounting. Located in the suburb of Davis, UC Davis is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the accounting program report average early career income of $72,371.
Located in the large city of San Francisco, Golden Gate University - San Francisco is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.
Those accounting students who get their master's degree from Golden Gate University - San Francisco make $18,344 more than the average accounting graduate.
SFSU is a very large public university located in the city of San Francisco.
Accounting master's degree recipients from San Francisco State University earn a boost of around $5,040 over the average earnings of accounting majors.
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 accounting master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
