When it comes to popularity, a master's degree in non-professional general legal studies sits in the middle of the road, ranking #160 out of 343 majors in the country. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 4 schools in the United States to determine which ones were the best for non-professional general legal studies students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 482 master's degrees in non-professional general legal studies to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Non-Professional General Legal Studies School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of non-professional general legal studies for getting your master's degree school matters. 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
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on non-professional general legal studies students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of non-professional general legal studies students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt non-professional general legal studies 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 non-professional general legal studies related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for non-professional general legal studies students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Non-Professional General Legal Studies Schools
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Non-Professional General Legal Studies Master's Degree Schools ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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American Public University System is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in non-professional general legal studies. Located in the fringe town of Charles Town, American Military University is a private for-profit university with a very large student population.
After graduation, non-professional general legal studies master's recipients typically earn an average of $52,022 in the first five years of their career.
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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
Your choice of non-professional general legal studies for getting your master's degree school matters. 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:
