If you plan on getting your master's degree in general engineering, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #59 in the country in terms of popularity. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 5 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best General Engineering Master's Degree Schools in California ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 291 master's degrees in general engineering during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great General Engineering School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of general engineering for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality engineering 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 quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection 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 general engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of general engineering students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 much debt general 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 general engineering related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general 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 General Engineering Master's Degree Schools in California list to help you make the college decision.
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University of California - Los Angeles is a wonderful option for students interested in a master's degree in general engineering. UCLA is a fairly large public university located in the city of Los Angeles.
General Engineering master's degree recipients from University of California - Los Angeles earn a boost of about $25,926 over the average income of general engineering graduates.
University of California - Riverside is a great option for individuals pursuing a master's degree in general engineering. UCR is a very large public university located in the city of Riverside.
Soon after graduating, engineering master's recipients typically make around $102,364 at the beginning of their 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).
Your choice of general engineering for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality engineering program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
