If you plan on getting your master's degree in drama & theater arts, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #83 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.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Drama & Theater Arts Master's Degree Schools in Massachusetts ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 47 master's degrees in drama & theater arts during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 drama & theater arts students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other drama & theater arts 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 drama & theater 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 drama & theater arts related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for drama & theater arts 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 Drama & Theater Arts Master's Degree Schools in Massachusetts ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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It's difficult to beat Emerson College if you wish to pursue a master's degree in drama & theater arts. Emerson is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit college located in the large city of Boston.
Soon after graduating, theater master's recipients typically earn about $39,309 at the beginning of their careers.
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).