If you plan on getting your master's degree in urban & regional planning, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #92 in the country in terms of popularity. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual reviewed 4 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of urban & regional planning. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 93 master's degrees in urban & regional planning during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Choosing a Great Urban & Regional Planning School for Your Master's Degree
The urban planning master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on urban & regional planning students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of urban & regional planning students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 much debt urban & regional planning students go into to obtain their master's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized urban & regional planning related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for urban & regional planning students working on their master's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Urban & Regional Planning Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Urban & Regional Planning in the Great Lakes Region
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in urban & regional planning.
Top Great Lakes Region Schools for a Master's in Urban Planning
It's difficult to beat Ohio State University - Main Campus if you want to pursue a master's degree in urban & regional planning. Ohio State is a very large public university located in the large city of Columbus.
Soon after graduating, urban planning master's recipients typically earn around $52,171 in the first five years of their career.
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in urban & regional planning. Located in the large city of Milwaukee, UWM is a public university with a very large student population.
After graduation, urban planning master's recipients usually earn an average of $50,248 in the first five years of their career.
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).
college factual
The urban planning master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
