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.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Student Counseling Master's Degree Schools in West Virginia ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 138 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 good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection 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.
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 West Virginia list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Marshall University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in student counseling. Marshall University is a fairly large public university located in the city of Huntington.
After graduating, student counseling master's recipients typically make about $47,527 at the beginning of their careers.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in student counseling has to look into West Virginia University. WVU is a very large public university located in the small city of Morgantown.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the student counseling program make around $50,543 in their early career salary.
Shepherd University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in student counseling. Located in the rural area of Shepherdstown, Shepherd University is a public university with a small student population.More information about a master’s in student counseling from Shepherd University
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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:
