If you're seeking a Master's Degree in marine science, you will have fewer peers than average since the major degree program is the #252 one in the country in terms of popularity.This may make is a little harder to find a school that is a good fit for you.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Marine Science Master's Degree Schools ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 89 master's degrees in marine science during the <nil> academic year.
Choosing a Great Marine Science School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of marine science for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality marine science program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 much a school focuses on marine science students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other marine science students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 marine science 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 marine science related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for marine science 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 Marine Science Master's Degree Schools list, to help you choose the best school for you.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Marine Science in the United States
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in marine science.
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).