Civil Engineering is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #40 most popular master's degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual looked at 21 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Civil Engineering Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 729 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. 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 good 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 host 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 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 the Great Lakes Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Every student who is interested in a master's degree in civil engineering has to take a look at Northwestern University. Located in the small city of Evanston, Northwestern is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.More information about a master’s in civil engineering from Northwestern University
It's hard to beat University of Michigan - Ann Arbor if you wish to pursue a master's degree in civil engineering. Located in the city of Ann Arbor, U-M is a public university with a very large student population.
Soon after graduation, civil eng master's recipients generally earn about $79,679 in the first five years of their career.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in civil engineering needs to check out University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. UIUC is a fairly large public university located in the city of Champaign.
Soon after graduating, civil eng master's recipients generally make about $79,099 in their early careers.
UW - Madison is a fairly large public university located in the city of Madison.
Those civil engineering students who get their master's degree from University of Wisconsin - Madison receive $4,448 more than the average civil eng student.
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).