Ranked #14 in popularity, public health is one of the most sought-after master's degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 10 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Public Health Master's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 752 master's degrees in public health during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Public Health School for Your Master's Degree
The public health master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality public health 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
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 take this into account we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination 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 many resources a school devotes to public health students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other public health 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 easy is it for public health 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 public health related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for public health students working on their master's degree.
The public health 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 Public Health Master's Degree Schools in Illinois.
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Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in public health has to check out Northwestern University. Located in the city of Evanston, Northwestern is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the public health major at Northwestern University get $3,866 more than the standard graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
It's hard to beat University of Illinois at Chicago if you want to pursue a master's degree in public health. Located in the large city of Chicago, UIC is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's recipients from the public health major at University of Illinois at Chicago make $4,943 above the average college grad with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in public health has to look into Benedictine University. Benedictine U is a small private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Lisle.
Students who graduate with their master's from the public health program report average early career wages of $64,930.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a great decision for students pursuing a master's degree in public health. UIUC is a fairly large public university located in the small city of Champaign.
Master's students who receive their degree from the public health program make an average of $57,236 in the first couple years of their career.
Loyola Chicago is a large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Chicago.
Public Health master's degree recipients from Loyola University Chicago get an earnings boost of approximately $3,988 above the typical earnings of public health majors.
Located in the suburb of Addison, Chamberlain - Illinois is a private for-profit university with a very large student population.
Those public health students who get their master's degree from Chamberlain University - Illinois earn $5,494 more than the typical public health student.
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 public health master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality public health program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
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