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 14 schools in the New England Region to determine which ones were the best for student counseling students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 478 master's degrees in student counseling during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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 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 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 complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for student counseling students working on their master's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Student Counseling Master's Degree Schools in the New England Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Boston University is a wonderful option for individuals interested in a master's degree in student counseling. Located in the large city of Boston, Boston U is a private not-for-profit university with a very large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the student counseling program make an average of $55,652 in the first couple years of working.
Bridgewater State University is a great decision for students interested in a master's degree in student counseling. Located in the large suburb of Bridgewater, Bridgewater State is a public university with a medium-sized student population.
Soon after graduating, student counseling master's recipients generally make an average of $54,196 in the first five years of their career.
Providence College is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in student counseling. Providence is a small private not-for-profit college located in the medium-sized city of Providence.
After graduation, student counseling master's recipients typically make around $53,813 at the beginning of their careers.
Located in the large city of Boston, UMass Boston is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those student counseling students who get their master's degree from University of Massachusetts - Boston earn $4,262 more than the standard student counseling grad.
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:
