a master's degree in aerospace & aeronautical engineering is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #74 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 6 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Aerospace & Aeronautical Engineering Master's Degree Schools in California ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 355 master's degrees in aerospace & aeronautical engineering to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Aerospace & Aeronautical Engineering School for Your Master's Degree
The aerospace engineering master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality aerospace engineering program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 take this into account we include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination 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 many resources a school devotes to aerospace & aeronautical engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of aerospace & aeronautical engineering 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 aerospace & aeronautical engineering 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 aerospace & aeronautical engineering related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for aerospace & aeronautical engineering 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 Aerospace & Aeronautical Engineering Master's Degree Schools in California list to help you make the college decision.
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University of Southern California is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in aerospace & aeronautical engineering. Located in the large city of Los Angeles, USC is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Those aerospace & aeronautical engineering students who get their master's degree from University of Southern California earn $2,191 more than the standard aerospace engineering graduate.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in aerospace & aeronautical engineering needs to check out Stanford University. Located in the suburb of Stanford, Stanford is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the aerospace engineering program state that they receive average early career income of $111,760.
It is difficult to beat University of California - Los Angeles if you want to pursue a master's degree in aerospace & aeronautical engineering. UCLA is a very large public university located in the large city of Los Angeles.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the aerospace engineering program make an average of $109,272 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).
The aerospace engineering master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality aerospace engineering program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
