2024 Best Communication & Media Studies Master's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region

If you plan on getting your master's degree in communication & media studies, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #44 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 2024 ranking, College Factual looked at 22 schools in the Middle Atlantic Region to determine which ones were the best for communication & media studies students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 566 master's degrees in communication & media studies to qualified students.

What's on this page: * Our Methodology

• Best Master’s Degree Schools List

Choosing a Great Communication & Media Studies School for Your Master's Degree

Your choice of communication & media studies 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

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 take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.

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

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 communication & media studies students vs. other majors.
• Major Demand - The number of communication & media studies students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
• 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 communication & media studies 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 communication & media studies related body.

Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for communication & media studies students working on their master's degree.

One Size Does Not Fit All

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 Communication & Media Studies Master's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region list to help you make the college decision.

Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Communication & Media Studies in the Middle Atlantic Region

Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in communication & media studies.

10 Top Middle Atlantic Region Schools for a Master's in Communications

1

Columbia University in the City of New York
New York, NY

84 Annual Graduates

$95,483 Median Starting Salary

Columbia University in the City of New York is a good decision for individuals interested in a master's degree in communication & media studies. Columbia is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of New York.

Master's recipients from the communication & media studies degree program at Columbia University in the City of New York earn $39,197 above the typical graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.

More information about a master’s in communication & media studies from Columbia University in the City of New York

2

University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA

15 Annual Graduates

University of Pennsylvania is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in communication & media studies. UPenn is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Philadelphia.More information about a master’s in communication & media studies from University of Pennsylvania

3

Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD

149 Annual Graduates

$74,230 Median Starting Salary

Johns Hopkins University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in communication & media studies. Located in the city of Baltimore, Johns Hopkins is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.

Those communication & media studies students who get their master's degree from Johns Hopkins University make $17,944 more than the typical communications student.

More information about a master’s in communication & media studies from Johns Hopkins University

4

Cornell University
Ithaca, NY

8 Annual Graduates

Cornell University is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in communication & media studies. Located in the small city of Ithaca, Cornell is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.More information about a master’s in communication & media studies from Cornell University

5

Villanova University
Villanova, PA

8 Annual Graduates

Villanova is a large private not-for-profit university located in the large suburb of Villanova.More information about a master’s in communication & media studies from Villanova University

6

American University
Washington, DC

71 Annual Graduates

$59,305 Median Starting Salary

Located in the city of Washington, The American University is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.

Those communication & media studies students who get their master's degree from American University receive $3,019 more than the typical communications graduate.

More information about a master’s in communication & media studies from American University

7

George Washington University
Washington, DC

7 Annual Graduates

Located in the large city of Washington, GWU is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.More information about a master’s in communication & media studies from George Washington University

8

Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY

11 Annual Graduates

Located in the midsize city of Syracuse, Syracuse is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.More information about a master’s in communication & media studies from Syracuse University

8

University of Maryland - College Park
College Park, MD

3 Annual Graduates

Located in the large suburb of College Park, UMCP is a public university with a fairly large student population.More information about a master’s in communication & media studies from University of Maryland - College Park

9

University of Delaware
Newark, DE

5 Annual Graduates

Located in the suburb of Newark, UD is a public university with a fairly large student population.More information about a master’s in communication & media studies from University of Delaware

Best Communication & Media Studies Colleges by State

Explore the best communication & media studies colleges for a specific state in the Middle Atlantic Region .

State	Colleges	Degrees Awarded
New York	261	199
Pennsylvania	248	92
Maryland	193	165
New Jersey	188	27
District of Columbia	154	78
Delaware	109	5

View All Rankings >

Rankings in Majors Related to Communications

One of 5 majors within the Communication & Journalism area of study, Communication & Media Studies has other similar majors worth exploring.

Communications Focus Areas

Major	Annual Graduates
Speech Communication	341
Communication & Media Studies	155
Communications	48
Other Communication & Media Studies	22

Most Popular Related Majors

Related Major	Annual Graduates
Public Relations & Advertising	761
Radio, Television & Digital Communication	726
Journalism	397
Communication & Journalism (Other)	163
Publishing	132

Notes and References

• 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).
• Credit for the banner image above goes to UNU-WIDER from Helsinki, Finland. More about our data sources and methodologies.