2025 Best Petroleum Engineering Master's Degree Schools
Petroleum Engineering is about average in terms of popularity for master's degrees programs. That is, it ranks #192 out of the 343 majors across the country that we analyze each year. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 7 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Petroleum Engineering Master's Degree Schools ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 188 master's degrees in petroleum engineering during the <nil> academic year.
What's on this page: * Our Methodology
Choosing a Great Petroleum Engineering School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of petroleum engineering 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 take this into account we include a college'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 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 many resources a school devotes to petroleum engineering students as compared to other majors.
- Major Demand - The number of petroleum engineering 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 petroleum engineering 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 petroleum engineering related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for petroleum engineering 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 Petroleum Engineering Master's Degree Schools list to help you make the college decision.