If you pursue a master's degree in student counseling, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #20 most popular program in the country. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 81 schools in the Southeast 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 3,909 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
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.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Student Counseling Master's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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ADBLOCK #171
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Student Counseling in the Southeast Region
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in student counseling. Only those schools that rank in the top 20% of all the schools we analyze get awarded with a place on this list.
16 Top Southeast Region Schools for a Master's in Student Counseling
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in student counseling has to look into University of Florida. UF is a fairly large public university located in the medium-sized city of Gainesville.
Students who graduate with their master's from the student counseling program state that they receive average early career income of $48,924.
It is difficult to beat University of Georgia if you wish to pursue a master's degree in student counseling. UGA is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Athens.
Students who graduate with their master's from the student counseling program report average early career income of $46,797.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in student counseling needs to check out North Carolina State University. Located in the large city of Raleigh, NC State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those student counseling students who get their master's degree from North Carolina State University earn $2,518 more than the standard student counseling graduate.
University of South Carolina - Columbia is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in student counseling. Located in the midsize city of Columbia, UofSC is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Soon after graduating, student counseling master's recipients generally earn an average of $42,686 at the beginning of their careers.
Florida State is a very large public university located in the city of Tallahassee.
Master's recipients from the student counseling program at Florida State University make $9,459 above the average college graduate with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Liberty University is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the small city of Lynchburg.
Student Counseling master's degree recipients from Liberty University get an earnings boost of around $2,063 over the typical income of student counseling graduates.
Located in the suburb of Fairfax, GMU is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's recipients from the student counseling program at George Mason University make $10,081 above the average college graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
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Honorable Mentions
Here are some additional great schools for Student Counseling students in the Southeast Region that almost earned our Best Student Counseling Master's Degree Schools in the Southeast Region award.
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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
