a master's degree in geological & earth sciences is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #82 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 40 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for geological & earth sciences students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 1,612 master's degrees in geological & earth sciences to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Geological & Earth Sciences School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of geological & earth sciences for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality geology 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 take this into account we include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection 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 geological & earth sciences students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of geological & earth sciences 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 geological & earth sciences 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 geological & earth sciences related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for geological & earth sciences students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Geological & Earth Sciences Schools
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Geological & Earth Sciences Master's Degree Schools list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Texas A&M University - College Station is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in geological & earth sciences. Texas A&M College Station is a very large public university located in the midsize city of College Station.
Soon after graduating, geology master's recipients typically make an average of $70,539 at the beginning of their careers.
University of Oklahoma is a fairly large public university located in the midsize suburb of Norman.
Master's recipients from the geological & earth sciences degree program at University of Oklahoma Norman Campus make $13,942 more than the typical college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
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).
Your choice of geological & earth sciences for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality geology program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
