Graduate school may be a critical step in your higher education, whether you are interested in expanding your knowledge, learning a specialization, or earning advanced credentials required by your profession. The best graduate schools in California offer advanced degrees, such as master’s and doctoral degrees, as well as opportunities for independent research, mentorships, and professional networking.
California’s higher education institutes span across the entire state, allowing students to study by the beach, in the forest, in small towns, and in large cities. The largest university, the University of California, Los Angeles, serves nearly 44,000 students and offers a tuition rate around $13,000. This isn’t the only school with a large student body though. California is home to 23 colleges and universities with student populations of over 20,000 students.
Find college admissions consultants in your state.
However, more than half of the state’s schools serve smaller student populations, offering plenty of options for students who crave a more intimate campus experience. Additionally, California boasts 50 religiously affiliated schools. Many of these schools have high graduation rates, though tuition costs can range greatly, from $8,000 at Bethesda University up to $54,000 at Pepperdine University.
Additionally, many of California’s colleges and universities boast influential faculty and alumni, including Neil Armstrong, Jerry Lewis, and Weird Al
Yankovic. In addition to famous alumni and professors, California’s schools are also home to some of the country’s top degree programs, including nursing, business, religious studies, education, literature, and law.
Though Hollywood has given an inside look into California’s most popular landmarks and attractions, these one-of-a-kind places aren’t the only reason people flock to The Golden State. With hundreds of colleges and universities to choose from, students have countless opportunities to further their education in California.
To learn more about earning your degree in California, check out some of the state’s top programs and career paths.
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There are 97 graduate schools in California. The list below of the 25 best graduate schools in the state is composed of both private and public schools that satisfy the following three conditions:
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great. This is why influence gets at the heart of what is truly best in education. At the undergraduate level, the best colleges and universities are those with the highest concentration of influence. Our Concentrated Influence metric adjusts overall influence by size of undergraduate student body, thus allowing smaller schools to compete with larger schools so long as they have proportionately as strong influential faculty and alums.
But at the graduate level, the combined influence score of a college or university’s top academic influencers is the best indicator of academic excellence. Overall influence, and not influence controlled by other variables, thus becomes the best gauge of academic excellence at the graduate level. Where smaller size is an advantage at the undergraduate level (hence Concentrated Influence), graduate studies benefit from a large and vibrant community of graduate students, who promise to become the new generation of academic influencers.
If you are serious about finding the best graduate schools, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching, and whether their graduates themselves are advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence. Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Influence, as measured by our InfluenceRanking engine, provides a ranking that is free from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
Find out more about our methodology here.
Less Tuition + fees
$54K
Acceptance
5%
Graduation
95%
Student body
15K
Median SAT/ACT
1505/33
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Stanford University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
17%
Graduation
92%
Student body
42K
Median SAT/ACT
1430/33
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University of California, Berkeley’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$13K
Acceptance
14%
Graduation
91%
Student body
44K
Median SAT/ACT
1415/32
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University of California, Los Angeles’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
37%
Graduation
87%
Student body
38K
Median SAT/ACT
1370/30
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University of California, San Diego’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$58K
Acceptance
16%
Graduation
92%
Student body
40K
Median SAT/ACT
1445/32
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University of Southern California’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$55K
Acceptance
7%
Graduation
92%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1545/35
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California Institute of Technology’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
37%
Graduation
84%
Student body
26K
Median SAT/ACT
1355/30
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University of California, Santa Barbara’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
46%
Graduation
86%
Student body
36K
Median SAT/ACT
1290/28
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University of California, Davis’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
30%
Graduation
85%
Student body
37K
Median SAT/ACT
1295/28
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University of California, Irvine’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Student body
1K
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University of California, San Francisco’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
65%
Graduation
76%
Student body
20K
Median SAT/ACT
1290/29
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University of California, Santa Cruz’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
66%
Graduation
77%
Student body
24K
Median SAT/ACT
1230/26
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University of California, Riverside’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
84%
Graduation
55%
Student body
26K
Median SAT/ACT
1045/20
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San Francisco State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$8K
Acceptance
37%
Graduation
76%
Student body
33K
Median SAT/ACT
1215/25
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San Diego State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$56K
Acceptance
42%
Graduation
89%
Student body
8K
Median SAT/ACT
1340/29
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Pepperdine University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Student body
1K
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Claremont Graduate University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$54K
Acceptance
51%
Graduation
92%
Student body
8K
Median SAT/ACT
1360/30
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Santa Clara University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$51K
Acceptance
27%
Graduation
66%
Student body
2K
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California Institute of the Arts’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
42%
Graduation
73%
Student body
32K
Median SAT/ACT
1145/23
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California State University, Long Beach’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Student body
5K
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Naval Postgraduate School’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
76%
Graduation
52%
Student body
24K
Median SAT/ACT
985/17
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California State University, Los Angeles’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$50K
Acceptance
50%
Graduation
83%
Student body
8K
Median SAT/ACT
1320/29
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Loyola Marymount University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$14K
Acceptance
85%
Graduation
69%
Student body
9K
Median SAT/ACT
1090/22
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University of California, Merced’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$50K
Acceptance
70%
Graduation
71%
Student body
10K
Median SAT/ACT
1230/26
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University of San Francisco’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$55K
Acceptance
58%
Graduation
80%
Student body
9K
Median SAT/ACT
1285/28
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Chapman University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
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