Dance isn't the most popular master's program in the world, but it's not the least popular either. To be more precise it ranks #196 in popularity out of 343 majors in the country. So, you may have to do some digging around to find quality schools that offer the degree program. This list can help with that.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Dance Master's Degree Schools ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 233 master's degrees in dance during the 2021-2022 academic year.
Choosing a Great Dance School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of dance for getting your master's degree school matters. 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 dance students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of dance 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 easy is it for dance 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 dance related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for dance 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 Dance Master's Degree Schools list, to help you choose the best school for you.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Dance in the United States
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in dance.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in dance has to look into New York University. Located in the large city of New York, NYU is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Soon after graduation, dance master's recipients generally earn an average of $36,556 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).