Computer Science is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #17 most popular major in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 8 schools in North Carolina to determine which ones were the best for computer science students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 952 master's degrees in computer science to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Computer Science School for Your Master's Degree
The compsci 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on computer science students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of computer science students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How much debt computer science 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 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.
The compsci 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 Computer Science Master's Degree Schools in North Carolina.
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North Carolina State University is a wonderful decision for individuals interested in a master's degree in computer science. Located in the large city of Raleigh, NC State is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's recipients from the computer science major at North Carolina State University get $16,771 more than the typical graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
University of North Carolina at Charlotte is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in computer science. UNC Charlotte is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Charlotte.
After graduation, compsci master's recipients typically make an average of $86,712 in the first five 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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
The compsci 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
