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 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Mechanical Engineering Master's Degree Schools in North Carolina ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 137 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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.
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 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 schools for mechanical engineering students working on their master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Mechanical Engineering Master's Degree Schools in North Carolina ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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It is difficult to beat North Carolina State University if you want to pursue a master's degree in mechanical engineering. NC State is a fairly large public university located in the city of Raleigh.
Students who graduate with their master's from the me program state that they receive average early career earnings of $95,469.
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
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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
