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 Connecticut offer advanced degrees, such as master’s and doctoral degrees, as well as opportunities for independent research, mentorships, and professional networking.
As the fourth oldest learning institute in the United States, Yale enrolls just over 15,000 students at its New Haven campus. Higher education in Connecticut includes both public and private institutions that offer associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. With 19 public schools and 20 private schools, students have a variety to choose from. Tuition for most of the state’s community colleges averages $4,000, while the cost for other public schools ranges from $8,000 to $16,000.
Students interested in psychology, economics, and communications can check out the University of Connecticut (UConn), which is home to the premier research institute for ecological psychology. Sacred Heart University, a Roman Catholic university, is known for its religious studies and business programs. And those looking for a smaller student population may want to check out Manchester Community College, which enrolls about 4000 students and offers affordable degrees in literature, biology, and social work.
Students in Connecticut can choose from a variety of higher education experiences fitting a full spectrum of budgets and career goals. Learn more and begin earning your degree from one of Connecticut’s top colleges or universities.
There are 9 doctorate-granting universities in Connecticut, 7 of which meet our criteria. The best graduate schools below are composed of both private and public schools that satisfy the following four 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.
Tuition + fees
$58K
Acceptance
7%
Graduation
96%
Student body
16K
Median SAT/ACT
1515/34
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Yale University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$59K
Acceptance
21%
Graduation
91%
Student body
4K
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Wesleyan University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$18K
Acceptance
56%
Graduation
83%
Student body
24K
Median SAT/ACT
1305/29
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University of Connecticut’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$44K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
55%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1130/24
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University of Hartford’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
65%
Graduation
52%
Student body
9K
Median SAT/ACT
1065/20
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Central Connecticut State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$42K
Acceptance
91%
Graduation
65%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1125/24
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University of New Haven’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
80%
Graduation
51%
Student body
9K
Median SAT/ACT
1000/20
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Southern Connecticut State University’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
What are Custom College Rankings?
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