If you plan on getting your master's degree in marketing, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #54 in the country in terms of popularity. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in California to determine which ones were the best for marketing students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 95 master's degrees in marketing during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Choosing a Great Marketing School for Your Master's Degree
The marketing master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality marketing program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 many resources a school devotes to marketing students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of marketing 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 marketing 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 marketing related body.
Our complete 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 the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Marketing Master's Degree Schools in California list, to help you choose the best school for you.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Marketing in California
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in marketing.
Top California Schools for a Master's in Marketing
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in marketing needs to check out University of Southern California. USC is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Los Angeles.
Marketing master's degree recipients from University of Southern California get an earnings boost of approximately $16,843 over the average income of marketing graduates.
It is difficult to beat Santa Clara University if you want to pursue a master's degree in marketing. Located in the medium-sized city of Santa Clara, SCU is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.More information about a master’s in marketing from Santa Clara University
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).
The marketing master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality marketing program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
