If you pursue a master's degree in computer science, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #17 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 looked at 13 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Computer Science Master's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 2,524 master's degrees in computer science during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Computer Science School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of computer science for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality compsci program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 computer science students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other computer science students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 computer 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 computer science related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for computer science students working on their master's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Computer Science Master's Degree Schools in Illinois list to help you make the college decision.
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It is difficult to beat University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign if you wish to pursue a master's degree in computer science. Located in the small city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the computer science degree program at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign make $35,952 more than the typical college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
University of Illinois at Chicago is a wonderful decision for students interested in a master's degree in computer science. UIC is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Chicago.
Soon after graduating, compsci master's recipients usually earn about $101,886 at the beginning of their careers.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in computer science has to take a look at Illinois Institute of Technology. Located in the city of Chicago, Illinois Tech is a private not-for-profit school with a moderately-sized student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the compsci program make about $93,148 in the first couple years of their career.
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).
Your choice of computer science for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality compsci program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
