History is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #51 most popular master's degree program in the country. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best History Master's Degree Schools in Virginia ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 254 master's degrees in history to qualified students.
DEBUG: Checking offer "History (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "History (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "History (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "History (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "BA in History" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "BA in History" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "MA in History" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "MA in History" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "History (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "History (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 4
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 2 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.8
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 2
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 2 offers with relevance >= 1.0
Choosing a Great History School for Your Master's Degree
The history master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 quality 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 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 many resources a school devotes to history students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of history students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 history 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 history related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for history students working on their master's degree.
The history 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 History Master's Degree Schools in Virginia.
George Mason University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in history. Located in the large suburb of Fairfax, GMU is a public university with a very large student population.
Those history students who get their master's degree from George Mason University make $2,830 more than the standard history grad.
Every student who is interested in a master's degree in history needs to check out Liberty University. Liberty University is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the small city of Lynchburg.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the history program earn around $46,189 in the first couple years of working.
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.
by our College Data Analytics Team
The history master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
