Criminal Justice & Corrections is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #30 most popular major in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 16 schools in the Middle Atlantic Region to determine which ones were the best for criminal justice & corrections students pursuing a master's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 853 master's degrees in criminal justice & corrections during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Criminal Justice & Corrections School for Your Master's Degree
The criminal justice 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 include a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection of different factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 criminal justice & corrections students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other criminal justice & corrections 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 easy is it for criminal justice & corrections to pay back their student loans after receiving their master's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized criminal justice & corrections related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for criminal justice & corrections students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Criminal Justice & Corrections Schools
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 Criminal Justice & Corrections Master's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region list to help you make the college decision.
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Any student who is interested in a master's degree in criminal justice & corrections needs to look into John Jay College of Criminal Justice. John Jay is a large public college located in the city of New York.
Criminal Justice & Corrections master's degree recipients from John Jay College of Criminal Justice earn a boost of about $6,293 over the average income of criminal justice & corrections majors.
American University is a good option for students pursuing a master's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the large city of Washington, The American University is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Criminal Justice & Corrections master's degree recipients from American University earn a boost of about $5,439 above the typical income of criminal justice & corrections majors.
It's hard to beat St John's University - New York if you wish to pursue a master's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the city of Queens, STJ is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the criminal justice program earn an average of $57,106 in their early career salary.
DeSales University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in criminal justice & corrections. Located in the suburb of Center Valley, DeSales is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.
Soon after graduation, criminal justice master's recipients generally earn about $56,176 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.
The criminal justice 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. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
