If you plan on getting your master's degree in civil engineering, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #40 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Civil Engineering Master's Degree Schools in Washington ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 165 master's degrees in civil engineering during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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
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 complete 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 picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Civil Engineering Master's Degree Schools in Washington ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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It's difficult to beat University of Washington - Seattle Campus if you wish to pursue a master's degree in civil engineering. UW Seattle is a fairly large public university located in the city of Seattle.
Soon after graduation, civil eng master's recipients usually earn an average of $87,462 in their early careers.
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).
