Forestry is about average in terms of popularity for master's degrees programs. That is, it ranks #182 out of the 343 majors across the country that we analyze each year. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 6 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Forestry Master's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 199 master's degrees in forestry to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Forestry School for Your Master's Degree
The forestry master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality forestry program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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 host of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
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 forestry students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of forestry students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 forestry 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 forestry related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for forestry 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 Forestry Master's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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University of Florida is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in forestry. UF is a very large public university located in the city of Gainesville.
Forestry master's degree recipients from University of Florida earn a boost of about $7,154 above the average earnings of forestry graduates.
It is hard to beat University of Georgia if you wish to pursue a master's degree in forestry. UGA is a very large public university located in the midsize city of Athens.
Students who graduate with their master's from the forestry program state that they receive average early career income of $46,160.
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 forestry master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality forestry program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
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