If you pursue a master's degree in computer science, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #17 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2024 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in Colorado to determine which ones were the best for computer science students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 313 master's degrees in computer science during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Choosing a Great Computer Science School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of computer science for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality compsci 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 computer science students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other computer science 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 computer science 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 computer science related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for computer science students working on their master's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Computer Science Master's Degree Schools in Colorado list, to help you choose the best school for you.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Computer Science in Colorado
Learn about the top ranked colleges and universities for computer science students seeking a a master's degree.
University of Colorado Boulder is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in computer science. CU - Boulder is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Boulder.
Computer Science master's degree recipients from University of Colorado Boulder get an earnings boost of around $5,707 above the typical earnings of computer science graduates.
Colorado Technical University - Colorado Springs is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in computer science. Located in the large city of Colorado Springs, Colorado Technical University - Colorado Springs is a private for-profit university with a very large student population.
Soon after graduating, compsci master's recipients usually make around $82,493 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).