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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 15 schools in the Plains States Region to determine which ones were the best for computer science students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 3,309 master's degrees in computer science during the 2022-2023 academic year.
DEBUG: Checking offer "MS in Information Technology - Software Application Development" with relevance 0.8
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MS in Information Technology - Software Application Development" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.8)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BS in Computer Information Systems" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "BS in Computer Information Systems" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 12
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 8 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 8
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 3 offers with relevance >= 1.0
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 full 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 the Plains States Region.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "computer-information-sciences//computer-science"
Washington University in St Louis is a good decision for individuals pursuing a master's degree in computer science. Located in the suburb of Saint Louis, WUSTL is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the compsci program report average early career income of $101,652.
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.
