If you plan on getting your master's degree in writing studies, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #49 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
College Factual looked at 22 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Writing Studies Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 639 master's degrees in writing studies to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Writing Studies School for Your Master's Degree
The writing master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. 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
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 much a school focuses on writing studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of writing studies 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 writing studies 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 writing studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for writing studies students working on their master's degree.
The writing 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 Writing Studies Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region.
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It's hard to beat University of Washington - Seattle Campus if you want to pursue a master's degree in writing studies. Located in the large city of Seattle, UW Seattle is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's students who receive their degree from the writing program make an average of $40,280 in their early career salary.
SDSU is a fairly large public university located in the city of San Diego.
Master's recipients from the writing studies major at San Diego State University make $2,707 more than the average college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Chapman is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the medium-sized city of Orange.
Master's recipients from the writing studies major at Chapman University make $2,329 more than the average college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Portland State University is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Portland.
Writing Studies master's degree recipients from Portland State University earn a boost of about $2,549 over the typical earnings of writing studies graduates.
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 writing master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. 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.
