Marketing is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #54 most popular master's degree program in the country. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 14 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for marketing students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 680 master's degrees in marketing during the 2022-2023 academic year.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Marketing (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Marketing (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Marketing (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Marketing (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Marketing (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Marketing (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MBA - Marketing (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA - Marketing (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "AS in Marketing" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "AS in Marketing" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Marketing" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Marketing" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MBA in Marketing" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MBA in Marketing" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Marketing" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MS in Marketing" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Business Administration - Marketing" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Business Administration - Marketing" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Marketing - Digital Marketing" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BS in Marketing - Digital Marketing" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Marketing - Digital Marketing" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MS in Marketing - Digital Marketing" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Social Media Marketing (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Social Media Marketing (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Marketing - Social Media Marketing" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "BS in Marketing - Social Media Marketing" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Marketing - Marketing Research & Analytics" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "MS in Marketing - Marketing Research & Analytics" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Marketing - New Media & Communications" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "MS in Marketing - New Media & Communications" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Marketing - Social Media Marketing" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "MS in Marketing - Social Media Marketing" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 11
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 4 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 4
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 4 offers with relevance >= 1.0
Choosing a Great Marketing School for Your Master's Degree
The marketing master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality marketing 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 marketing students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of marketing 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 marketing 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 marketing related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for marketing students working on their master's degree.
The marketing 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 Marketing Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "business-management-marketing-sales//marketing"
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in marketing. Located in the small city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those marketing students who get their master's degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign receive $2,142 more than the average marketing graduate.
Every student who is interested in a master's degree in marketing needs to check out University of Wisconsin - Madison. Located in the city of Madison, UW - Madison is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those marketing students who get their master's degree from University of Wisconsin - Madison earn $48,799 more than the average marketing student.
Located in the small city of East Lansing, Michigan State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Marketing master's degree recipients from Michigan State University receive an earnings boost of approximately $12,672 over the typical income of marketing graduates.
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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
The marketing master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality marketing program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
