If you plan on getting your master's degree in physics, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #70 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 reviewed 9 schools in the Middle Atlantic Region to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of physics. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 542 master's degrees in physics during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Physics School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of physics for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality physics 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
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 many resources a school devotes to physics students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other physics students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 physics 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 physics related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for physics students working on their master's degree.
The physics 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 Physics Master's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region.
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University of Rochester is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in physics. Located in the midsize city of Rochester, University of Rochester is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.More information about a master’s in physics from University of Rochester
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).