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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 21 schools in the Middle Atlantic Region to determine which ones were the best for civil engineering students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 727 master's degrees in civil engineering to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Civil Engineering School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of civil engineering for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on civil engineering students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of civil engineering students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 much debt civil 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 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.
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 Civil Engineering Master's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Columbia University in the City of New York is a great option for individuals pursuing a master's degree in civil engineering. Located in the city of New York, Columbia is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Those civil engineering students who get their master's degree from Columbia University in the City of New York earn $6,600 more than the typical civil eng graduate.
Cornell University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in civil engineering. Cornell is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Ithaca.
Soon after graduation, civil eng master's recipients typically earn around $81,361 in the first five years of their career.
Located in the large city of Newark, NJIT is a public school with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the civil engineering major at New Jersey Institute of Technology earn $8,102 above the typical college graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Located in the large city of New York, NYU is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Master's recipients from the civil engineering program at New York University make $10,062 more than the average graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Located in the large suburb of Villanova, Villanova is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Civil Engineering master's degree recipients from Villanova University receive an earnings boost of around $7,432 over the average income of civil engineering graduates.
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 civil engineering for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
