a master's degree in chemistry is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #66 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Chemistry Master's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 161 master's degrees in chemistry to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Chemistry School for Your Master's Degree
The chemistry 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 good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection of different 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 chemistry students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other chemistry 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 much debt chemistry 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 chemistry related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for chemistry students working on their master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Chemistry Master's Degree Schools in the Plains States Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Chemistry in the Plains States Region
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in chemistry.
Top Plains States Region Schools for a Master's in Chemistry
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.