If you pursue a master's degree in electrical engineering, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #27 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 21 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for electrical engineering students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 1,212 master's degrees in electrical engineering to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Electrical Engineering School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of electrical engineering for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality ee 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
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 electrical engineering students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other electrical engineering students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 easy is it for electrical 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 electrical engineering related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for electrical 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 Electrical Engineering Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Purdue University - Main Campus is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in electrical engineering. Purdue is a fairly large public university located in the city of West Lafayette.
Those electrical engineering students who get their master's degree from Purdue University - Main Campus make $3,107 more than the typical ee student.
University of Wisconsin - Madison is a good decision for individuals pursuing a master's degree in electrical engineering. Located in the city of Madison, UW - Madison is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Electrical Engineering master's degree recipients from University of Wisconsin - Madison earn a boost of around $4,911 above the typical earnings of electrical engineering majors.
It's difficult to beat University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign if you want to pursue a master's degree in electrical engineering. Located in the city of Champaign, UIUC is a public university with a very large student population.
Those electrical engineering students who get their master's degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign receive $11,837 more than the average ee student.
Ohio State is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Columbus.
Master's recipients from the electrical engineering degree program at Ohio State University - Main Campus make $2,904 more than the average college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
UM Dearborn is a medium-sized public university located in the medium-sized city of Dearborn.
Electrical Engineering master's degree recipients from University of Michigan - Dearborn earn a boost of around $8,267 over the average earnings of electrical 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).