Marketing is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #54 most popular master's degree program in the country. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 61 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for marketing students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 3,346 master's degrees in marketing to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Marketing School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of marketing 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. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a good 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.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on marketing students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other marketing 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 much debt marketing 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 marketing related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for marketing students working on their master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Marketing Master's Degree Schools ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Marketing in the United States
Explore the top ranked colleges and universities for marketing students seeking a a master's degree. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in marketing needs to check out University of Pennsylvania. UPenn is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Philadelphia.
Master's recipients from the marketing major at University of Pennsylvania make $119,360 more than the average college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
It is hard to beat Northwestern University if you want to pursue a master's degree in marketing. Located in the small city of Evanston, Northwestern is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.More information about a master’s in marketing from Northwestern University
University of Southern California is a wonderful option for individuals pursuing a master's degree in marketing. Located in the large city of Los Angeles, USC is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Master's recipients from the marketing degree program at University of Southern California earn $23,994 more than the standard college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a good choice for individuals interested in a master's degree in marketing. UIUC is a fairly large public university located in the city of Champaign.
Those marketing students who get their master's degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign make $6,082 more than the standard marketing graduate.
UW - Madison is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Madison.
Master's recipients from the marketing program at University of Wisconsin - Madison get $52,739 above the standard college graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
Texas A&M College Station is a very large public university located in the midsize city of College Station.
Those marketing students who get their master's degree from Texas A&M University - College Station receive $6,106 more than the average marketing student.
Located in the city of Philadelphia, St. Joe's is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.
Master's recipients from the marketing program at Saint Joseph's University get $6,228 more than the typical graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
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).