If you plan on getting your master's degree in behavioral science, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #105 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Behavioral Science Master's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 524 master's degrees in behavioral science during the 2022-2023 academic year.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Applied Behavior Analysis (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Applied Behavior Analysis (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Applied Behavior Analysis (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Applied Behavior Analysis (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Applied Behavior Analysis (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Applied Behavior Analysis (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Applied Behavior Analysis (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Applied Behavior Analysis (I Have a Masters)" REJECTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Behavioral Health Science (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Behavioral Health Science (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Health Psychology (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Health Psychology (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Health Psychology (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Health Psychology (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Diploma Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "General Psychology (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "General Psychology (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: Checking offer "General Psychology (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "General Psychology (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: Checking offer "General Psychology (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "General Psychology (I Have a Masters)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Psychology Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Psychology Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Psychology EdS Programs (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Psychology EdS Programs (I Have a Masters)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Psychology Graduate Certificate Programs (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Psychology Graduate Certificate Programs (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Psychology PhD Programs (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Psychology PhD Programs (I Have a Masters)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Psychology PsyD Programs (I Have a Masters)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Psychology PsyD Programs (I Have a Masters)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Science & Engineering Masters Programs (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✗ Offer "Science & Engineering Masters Programs (I Have a Bachelors)" REJECTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 0
DEBUG: No relevant offers, showing generic ESYOH widget
Choosing a Great Behavioral Science School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of behavioral science 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
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 behavioral science students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other behavioral science students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 behavioral science 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 behavioral science related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for behavioral science 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 Behavioral Science Master's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region list to help you make the college decision.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "multi-interdisciplinary-studies//behavioral-science"
Every student who is interested in a master's degree in behavioral science needs to check out University of Pennsylvania. Located in the city of Philadelphia, UPenn is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the behavioral science degree program at University of Pennsylvania earn $6,888 more than the typical graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
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).
Your choice of behavioral science 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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
