Ranked #20 in popularity, student counseling is one of the most sought-after master's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 42 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for student counseling students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 1,233 master's degrees in student counseling to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Student Counseling School for Your Master's Degree
The student counseling master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality student counseling 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 quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we include a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of different 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 student counseling students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other student counseling 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 easy is it for student counseling to pay back their student loans after receiving their master's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized student counseling related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for student counseling 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 Student Counseling Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Indiana University - Bloomington is a good choice for individuals interested in a master's degree in student counseling. Located in the city of Bloomington, IU Bloomington is a public university with a very large student population.
Soon after graduation, student counseling master's recipients generally earn about $42,105 in their early careers.
Every student who is interested in a master's degree in student counseling has to take a look at Concordia University, Chicago. Located in the large suburb of River Forest, Concordia University, Chicago is a private not-for-profit university with a moderately-sized student population.
Student Counseling master's degree recipients from Concordia University, Chicago get an earnings boost of about $25,170 above the typical income of student counseling graduates.
DePaul University is a wonderful choice for individuals pursuing a master's degree in student counseling. DePaul is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Chicago.
Student Counseling master's degree recipients from DePaul University receive an earnings boost of around $3,173 over the average earnings of student counseling majors.
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 student counseling master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality student counseling program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
