a master's degree in environmental engineering is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #133 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. 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 Environmental Engineering Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 92 master's degrees in environmental engineering to qualified students.
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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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on environmental engineering students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of environmental 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 easy is it for environmental 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 environmental engineering related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for environmental engineering students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Environmental Engineering Schools
The environmental engineering school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Environmental Engineering Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region.
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Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in environmental engineering needs to look into California State University - Fullerton. Located in the suburb of Fullerton, Cal State Fullerton is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the environmental engineering program make about $97,390 in the first couple years of working.
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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
