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.
College Factual looked at 6 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Mental & Social Health Services Master's Degree Schools in Virginia ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,058 master's degrees in mental & social health services to qualified students.
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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 account for this 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 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 complete 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.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Mental & Social Health Services Master's Degree Schools in Virginia list to help you make the college decision.
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It is hard to beat Virginia Commonwealth University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in mental & social health services. VCU is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of Richmond.
Those mental & social health services students who get their master's degree from Virginia Commonwealth University receive $28,931 more than the average mental health services grad.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in mental & social health services has to take a look at Liberty University. Liberty University is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Lynchburg.
Soon after graduation, mental health services master's recipients usually earn around $45,136 in the first five years of their career.
Marymount University is a good choice for students pursuing a master's degree in mental & social health services. Marymount is a small private not-for-profit university located in the city of Arlington.
Master's recipients from the mental & social health services major at Marymount University get $7,025 above the average college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
Regent University 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 Virginia Beach, Regent is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
After graduation, mental health services master's recipients typically make about $41,047 at the beginning of their careers.
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:
