a master's degree in civil engineering is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #40 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
College Factual looked at 17 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Civil Engineering Master's Degree Schools in California ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 962 master's degrees in civil engineering to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Civil Engineering School for Your Master's Degree
The civil eng master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality civil eng 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
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 school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
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 civil engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other civil engineering students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 easy is it for civil engineering 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 civil engineering related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for civil engineering students working on their master's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Civil Engineering Master's Degree Schools in California list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Stanford University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in civil engineering. Located in the suburb of Stanford, Stanford is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the civil eng program earn about $83,740 for their early career.
University of Southern California is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in civil engineering. Located in the city of Los Angeles, USC is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the civil engineering major at University of Southern California earn $4,423 more than the typical college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
It's difficult to beat University of California - Davis if you want to pursue a master's degree in civil engineering. UC Davis is a very large public university located in the suburb of Davis.
Students who graduate with their master's from the civil eng program state that they receive average early career earnings of $86,909.
Located in the city of La Jolla, UCSD is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the civil engineering major at University of California - San Diego get $2,941 more than the typical graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
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 civil eng master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality civil eng program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
