Writing Studies is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #49 most popular master's degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in Illinois to determine which ones were the best for writing studies students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 120 master's degrees in writing studies during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Writing Studies School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of writing studies for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality writing program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to writing studies students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other writing studies students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 much debt writing studies 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 writing studies related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools 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 Illinois.
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DePaul University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in writing studies. DePaul is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Chicago.
Those writing studies students who get their master's degree from DePaul University receive $6,808 more than the average writing grad.
Columbia College Chicago is a great decision for students pursuing a master's degree in writing studies. Columbia is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit college located in the large city of Chicago.
Students who graduate with their master's from the writing program report average early career income of $33,972.
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
Your choice of writing studies for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality writing program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
