Historic Preservationmaster's programs are on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of popularity. In fact, the major degree program ranks #209 out of the 343 majors we look at each year. As such, your educational options may be more limited than if you were in a more popular field.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Historic Preservation Master's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 54 master's degrees in historic preservation during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Choosing a Great Historic Preservation School for Your Master's Degree
The historic preservation master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. 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 quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider 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 much a school focuses on historic preservation students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other historic preservation 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 easy is it for historic preservation 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 historic preservation related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for historic preservation 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 Historic Preservation Master's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Historic Preservation in the Middle Atlantic Region
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in historic preservation.
Top Middle Atlantic Region Schools for a Master's in Historic Preservation
It is difficult to beat Columbia University in the City of New York if you wish to pursue a master's degree in historic preservation. Columbia is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of New York.
Students who graduate with their master's from the historic preservation program state that they receive average early career wages of $53,920.
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.
The historic preservation master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. 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:
