a master's degree in urban & regional planning is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #92 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
College Factual reviewed 3 schools in the Plains States 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 71 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
Your choice of urban & regional planning for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality urban planning 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 college'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.
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 urban & regional planning students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other urban & regional planning 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 urban & regional planning 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 urban & regional planning related body.
Our complete 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.
More Ways to Rank Urban & Regional Planning Schools
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Urban & Regional Planning Master's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Urban & Regional Planning in the Plains States Region
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in urban & regional planning.
Top Plains States Region Schools for a Master's in Urban Planning
Iowa State University is a good option for students pursuing a master's degree in urban & regional planning. Iowa State is a very large public university located in the small city of Ames.
Those urban & regional planning students who get their master's degree from Iowa State University receive $5,621 more than the average urban planning graduate.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in urban & regional planning needs to look into University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. UMN Twin Cities is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Minneapolis.
After graduation, urban planning master's recipients generally earn about $51,762 in their early 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).
college factual
Your choice of urban & regional planning for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality urban planning program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
