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.
College Factual reviewed 7 schools in Virginia to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of student counseling. Combined, these schools handed out 898 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 good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we include a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host 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 complete 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.
The student counseling school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Student Counseling Master's Degree Schools in Virginia.
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It is difficult to beat Liberty University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in student counseling. Liberty University is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the small city of Lynchburg.
Soon after graduation, student counseling master's recipients usually earn around $49,663 in the first five years of their career.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in student counseling needs to look into George Mason University. Located in the large suburb of Fairfax, GMU is a public university with a very large student population.
Those student counseling students who get their master's degree from George Mason University make $7,603 more than the typical student counseling student.
Virginia Commonwealth University is a great decision for individuals interested in a master's degree in student counseling. VCU is a very large public university located in the midsize city of Richmond.
Master's recipients from the student counseling degree program at Virginia Commonwealth University get $3,678 more than the average graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
It's difficult to beat Old Dominion University if you want to pursue a master's degree in student counseling. Old Dominion is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Norfolk.
Students who graduate with their master's from the student counseling program state that they receive average early career wages of $48,167.
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:
