If you pursue a master's degree in accounting, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #10 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 5 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Accounting Master's Degree Schools in Virginia ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 367 master's degrees in accounting during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Accounting School for Your Master's Degree
The accounting master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to accounting students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of accounting students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt accounting 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 accounting related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for accounting 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 Accounting Master's Degree Schools in Virginia list to help you make the college decision.
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George Mason University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in accounting. GMU is a very large public university located in the suburb of Fairfax.
Master's recipients from the accounting program at George Mason University get $7,482 more than the standard graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
It's hard to beat Virginia Tech if you want to pursue a master's degree in accounting. Located in the city of Blacksburg, Virginia Tech is a public school with a fairly large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the accounting program earn around $68,641 in their early career salary.
It is difficult to beat James Madison University if you want to pursue a master's degree in accounting. JMU is a fairly large public university located in the small city of Harrisonburg.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the accounting program make about $71,372 in the first couple years of working.
It's hard to beat Liberty University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in accounting. Located in the small city of Lynchburg, Liberty University is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduation, accounting master's recipients generally earn about $66,592 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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
The accounting master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
