If you plan on getting your master's degree in systems engineering, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #67 in the country in terms of popularity. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 4 schools in the New England Region to determine which ones were the best for systems engineering students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 277 master's degrees in systems engineering during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Systems Engineering School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of systems 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. 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 systems engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of systems engineering students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 easy is it for systems 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 systems engineering related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for systems 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 Systems Engineering Master's Degree Schools in the New England Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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It is hard to beat Massachusetts Institute of Technology if you want to pursue a master's degree in systems engineering. Located in the midsize city of Cambridge, MIT is a private not-for-profit school with a large student population.
Those systems engineering students who get their master's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology earn $28,903 more than the average systems engineering student.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute is a great decision for individuals pursuing a master's degree in systems engineering. WPI is a medium-sized private not-for-profit school located in the medium-sized city of Worcester.
Those systems engineering students who get their master's degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute receive $4,773 more than the typical systems engineering student.
Northeastern University is a wonderful option for individuals interested in a master's degree in systems engineering. Northeastern is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Boston.
Students who graduate with their master's from the systems engineering program report average early career wages of $88,691.
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).