General Architecture is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #122 most popular master's degree program in the country. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in Illinois to determine which ones were the best for general architecture students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 59 master's degrees in general architecture during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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 general architecture students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other general architecture 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 general architecture 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 general architecture related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for general architecture 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 General Architecture Master's Degree Schools in Illinois list to help you make the college decision.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study General Architecture in Illinois
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in general architecture.
Top Illinois Schools for a Master's in Architecture
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in general architecture has to check out Southern Illinois University Carbondale. SIUC is a fairly large public university located in the town of Carbondale.
General Architecture master's degree recipients from Southern Illinois University Carbondale get an earnings boost of about $5,183 over the average earnings of general architecture majors.
University of Illinois at Chicago is a good decision for individuals pursuing a master's degree in general architecture. UIC is a very large public university located in the large city of Chicago.
Master's students who receive their degree from the architecture program earn around $46,760 in the first couple 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).
