Systems Engineering is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #67 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.
College Factual looked at 3 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Systems Engineering Master's Degree Schools in Virginia ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 80 master's degrees in systems engineering during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Choosing a Great Systems Engineering School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of systems 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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.
Early-Career Earnings
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 systems engineering students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of systems engineering 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 systems engineering 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 systems engineering related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for systems engineering students working on their master's degree.
The systems engineering school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Systems Engineering Master's Degree Schools in Virginia.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Systems Engineering in Virginia
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in systems engineering.
Top Virginia Schools for a Master's in Systems Engineering
University of Virginia - Main Campus is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in systems engineering. Located in the midsize suburb of Charlottesville, University of Virginia is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the systems engineering program earn around $115,773 in the first couple years of their career.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in systems engineering has to look into George Mason University. GMU is a fairly large public university located in the large suburb of Fairfax.
Students who graduate with their master's from the systems engineering program state that they receive average early career income of $117,239.
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).
Your choice of systems 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
