If you pursue a master's degree in mental & social health services, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #16 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2024 ranking, College Factual looked at 8 schools in Virginia to determine which ones were the best for mental & social health services students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,207 master's degrees in mental & social health services during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Choosing a Great Mental & Social Health Services School for Your Master's Degree
The mental health services master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality mental health services program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 take this into account we consider a school'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.
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 much a school focuses on mental & social health services students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other mental & social health services 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 mental & social health services 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 mental & social health services related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for mental & social health services students working on their master's degree.
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 Mental & Social Health Services Master's Degree Schools in Virginia list to help you make the college decision.
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Featured Mental & Social Health Services Programs
Learn about start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.
Become a champion of change and take your first step toward licensure as a clinical mental health counselor with this specialized and CACREP-accredited online clinical counseling master's from Southern New Hampshire University.
It is hard to beat Virginia Commonwealth University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in mental & social health services. VCU is a fairly large public university located in the city of Richmond.
Those mental & social health services students who get their master's degree from Virginia Commonwealth University receive $20,979 more than the standard mental health services grad.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in mental & social health services has to look into Liberty University. Liberty University is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Lynchburg.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the mental health services program make an average of $38,005 in the first couple years of working.
Marymount University is a wonderful option for individuals interested in a master's degree in mental & social health services. Marymount is a small private not-for-profit university located in the medium-sized city of Arlington.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the mental health services program make around $42,468 in the first couple years of working.
Regent University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in mental & social health services. Located in the city of Virginia Beach, Regent is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the mental health services program state that they receive average early career wages of $38,765.
Located in the large city of Virginia Beach, South University, Virginia Beach is a private for-profit university with a fairly small student population.
After graduation, mental health services master's recipients generally earn about $38,224 in their early careers.
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.
college factual
The mental health services master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality mental health services program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
