If you pursue a master's degree in mental & social health services, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #16 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 40 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Mental & Social Health Services Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 1,824 master's degrees in mental & social health services during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Mental & Social Health Services School for Your Master's Degree
The mental health services master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality mental health services 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 consider 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 mental & social health services students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other mental & social health services 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 much debt mental & social health services students go into to obtain their master's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized mental & social health services related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for mental & social health services students working on their master's degree.
The mental health services 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 Mental & Social Health Services Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region.
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Northwestern University is a good decision for individuals pursuing a master's degree in mental & social health services. Located in the small city of Evanston, Northwestern is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Those mental & social health services students who get their master's degree from Northwestern University receive $19,362 more than the typical mental health services student.
Michigan State University is a wonderful decision for students pursuing a master's degree in mental & social health services. Michigan State is a fairly large public university located in the city of East Lansing.
Mental & Social Health Services master's degree recipients from Michigan State University get an earnings boost of approximately $5,196 over the typical income of mental & social health services majors.
Ohio State University - Main Campus is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in mental & social health services. Located in the city of Columbus, Ohio State is a public university with a very large student population.
Those mental & social health services students who get their master's degree from Ohio State University - Main Campus earn $30,410 more than the standard mental health services student.
Located in the large city of Detroit, Wayne State is a public university with a very large student population.
Master's recipients from the mental & social health services degree program at Wayne State University earn $21,172 above the average college grad in this field when they enter the workforce.
Marquette is a large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Milwaukee.
Master's recipients from the mental & social health services major at Marquette University get $5,724 above the typical college grad in this field shortly after graduation.
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.
The mental health services master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality mental health services program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
