Ranked #29 in popularity, mechanical engineering is one of the most sought-after master's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 24 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Mechanical Engineering Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,384 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
The me master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality me program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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 Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to mechanical engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other mechanical 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 much debt mechanical 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 mechanical engineering related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges 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 Far Western US Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Stanford University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in mechanical engineering. Stanford is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Stanford.
Master's recipients from the mechanical engineering major at Stanford University earn $22,322 more than the typical college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
University of Southern California is a great decision for students pursuing a master's degree in mechanical engineering. USC is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Los Angeles.
Master's recipients from the mechanical engineering major at University of Southern California earn $7,649 above the standard college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
University of California - Los Angeles is a great decision for individuals pursuing a master's degree in mechanical engineering. Located in the large city of Los Angeles, UCLA is a public university with a very large student population.
Those mechanical engineering students who get their master's degree from University of California - Los Angeles receive $9,806 more than the typical me student.
Located in the medium-sized city of Santa Clara, SCU is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Master's recipients from the mechanical engineering program at Santa Clara University get $24,972 above the standard college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
UCSD is a very large public university located in the city of La Jolla.
Master's recipients from the mechanical engineering major at University of California - San Diego make $13,910 above the average graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Located in the city of Seattle, UW Seattle is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those mechanical engineering students who get their master's degree from University of Washington - Seattle Campus receive $2,418 more than the standard me grad.
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).
The me master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality me program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
