Mechanical Engineering is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #29 most popular major in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 8 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Mechanical Engineering Master's Degree Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 358 master's degrees in mechanical engineering during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Mechanical Engineering School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of mechanical 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
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 include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of various 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 much a school focuses on mechanical engineering students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of mechanical 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 easy is it for mechanical 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 mechanical engineering related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for mechanical 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 Mechanical Engineering Master's Degree Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region list to help you make the college decision.
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It is difficult to beat Colorado School of Mines if you want to pursue a master's degree in mechanical engineering. Mines is a moderately-sized public school located in the suburb of Golden.
Master's students who receive their degree from the me program earn around $89,093 for their early career.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in mechanical engineering needs to check out University of Utah. Located in the city of Salt Lake City, U of U is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's recipients from the mechanical engineering major at University of Utah earn $4,480 above the typical college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in mechanical engineering has to take a look at University of Colorado Boulder. Located in the city of Boulder, CU - Boulder is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's students who receive their degree from the me program make about $84,620 for their early career.
Colorado State University - Fort Collins is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in mechanical engineering. Located in the medium-sized city of Fort Collins, Colorado State is a public university with a very large student population.
Those mechanical engineering students who get their master's degree from Colorado State University - Fort Collins receive $5,819 more than the standard me graduate.
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 mechanical 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:
