a master's degree in geography & cartography is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #111 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Geography & Cartography Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 135 master's degrees in geography & cartography to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Geography & Cartography School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of geography & cartography for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality geography 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
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 account for this 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.
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
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 geography & cartography students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other geography & cartography 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 geography & cartography 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 geography & cartography related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for geography & cartography students working on their master's degree.
The geography 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 Geography & Cartography Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Geography & Cartography in the Great Lakes Region
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in geography & cartography.
Top Great Lakes Region Schools for a Master's in Geography
University of Wisconsin - Madison is a wonderful choice for individuals pursuing a master's degree in geography & cartography. UW - Madison is a very large public university located in the city of Madison.
Those geography & cartography students who get their master's degree from University of Wisconsin - Madison receive $10,875 more than the average geography student.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in geography & cartography has to look into Kent State University at Kent. Located in the large suburb of Kent, Kent State is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the geography program earn around $52,615 in their early career salary.
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 geography & cartography for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality geography program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
