If you pursue a master's degree in mechanical engineering, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #29 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 6 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Mechanical Engineering Master's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 239 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
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 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.
The me 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 Mechanical Engineering Master's Degree Schools in Illinois.
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It is difficult to beat Northwestern University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in mechanical engineering. Located in the small city of Evanston, Northwestern is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the me program state that they receive average early career wages of $83,978.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in mechanical engineering needs to take a look at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. UIUC is a fairly large public university located in the small city of Champaign.
Mechanical Engineering master's degree recipients from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign receive an earnings boost of about $13,325 above the average income of mechanical engineering majors.
Illinois Institute of Technology is a wonderful decision for individuals pursuing a master's degree in mechanical engineering. Illinois Tech is a medium-sized private not-for-profit school located in the large city of Chicago.
Soon after graduation, me master's recipients usually make around $83,195 at the beginning of their careers.
Located in the small suburb of Dekalb, NIU is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the mechanical engineering program at Northern Illinois University earn $4,003 above the typical college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
