If you plan on getting your master's degree in design & applied arts, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #72 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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 36 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for design & applied arts students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 1,688 master's degrees in design & applied arts to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Design & Applied Arts School for Your Master's Degree
The design master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality design 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 quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host 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 design & applied arts students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of design & applied arts 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 design & applied arts 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 design & applied arts related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for design & applied arts students working on their master's degree.
The design 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 Design & Applied Arts Master's Degree Schools.
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Translate your creative ideas through concept, design and digital media with a bachelor's in graphic design online from Southern New Hampshire University.
Take the first step toward a career of visual expression and doing what you love with this online associate degree from Southern New Hampshire University.
Learn to create a striking portfolio and hone the skills you need to succeed in the world of professional photography with this online digital photography degree from Southern New Hampshire University.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in design & applied arts needs to look into Maryland Institute College of Art. MICA is a small private not-for-profit college located in the large city of Baltimore.
Those design & applied arts students who get their master's degree from Maryland Institute College of Art make $20,201 more than the average design graduate.
Pratt Institute - Main is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in design & applied arts. Pratt Institute is a medium-sized private not-for-profit school located in the city of Brooklyn.
Students who graduate with their master's from the design program state that they receive average early career wages of $45,720.
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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.
The design master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality design program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
