2025 Best Materials Sciences Schools in California
3Colleges in California
181Materials Science Degrees Awarded
$72,216Avg Early-Career Salary
Materials Sciences degree programs are on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of popularity. In fact, the major ranks #265 out of the 395 majors we look at each year. As such, your educational options may be more limited than if you were in a more popular field.
College Factual reviewed 3 schools in California to determine which ones were the best for degree seekers in the field of materials sciences. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 181 degrees in materials sciences annually.
Your choice of materials sciences school matters, so we have put together these rankings to help you make your decision. In order to come up with a best overall ranking for materials sciences schools, we combine our degree-level rankings, weighting them by the number of degrees awarded at each level.
You may want to choose one of the degree levels below to find the schools of most interest to you.
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 Materials Sciences Schools in California list to help you make the college decision.
You can also filter this list by location to find schools closer to you.
In addition to College Factual's rankings, you may want to take a look at College Combat, our unique tool that lets you pit your favorite schools head-to-head and compare how they rate on factors that most interest you.
When you have some time, check it out - you may want to bookmark the link so you don't forget it.
Although we recommend filtering by degree level first, you can view the list below to see which schools give the educational experience for the materials science degree levels they offer.
Every student pursuing a degree in materials sciences has to check out University of California - Berkeley. UC Berkeley is a very large public university located in the city of Berkeley. A Best Colleges rank of #14 out of 2,152 schools nationwide means UC Berkeley is a great university overall.
There were approximately 101 materials sciences students who graduated with this degree at UC Berkeley in the most recent year we have data available.
It is difficult to beat University of California - Santa Barbara if you wish to pursue a degree in materials sciences. Located in the midsize suburb of Santa Barbara, UCSB is a public university with a very large student population. This university ranks 7th out of 161 schools for overall quality in the state of California.
There were roughly 31 materials sciences students who graduated with this degree at UCSB in the most recent data year.
University of California - Los Angeles is a good option for students pursuing a degree in materials sciences. Located in the large city of Los Angeles, UCLA is a public university with a very large student population. This university ranks 4th out of 161 colleges for overall quality in the state of California.
There were roughly 8 materials sciences students who graduated with this degree at UCLA in the most recent data year.
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).
Credit for the banner image above goes to Per Henning.
Your choice of materials sciences school matters, so we have put together these rankings to help you make your decision. In order to come up with a best overall ranking for materials sciences schools, we combine our degree-level rankings, weighting them by the number of degrees awarded at each level.
