Ranked #7 in popularity, clinical, counseling & applied psychology is one of the most sought-after master's degree programs in the nation. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 9 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Clinical, Counseling & Applied Psychology Master's Degree Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 928 master's degrees in clinical, counseling & applied psychology during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Clinical, Counseling & Applied Psychology School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of clinical, counseling & applied psychology for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality clinical psychology 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
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 clinical, counseling & applied psychology students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other clinical, counseling & applied psychology 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 clinical, counseling & applied psychology 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 clinical, counseling & applied psychology related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for clinical, counseling & applied psychology students working on their master's degree.
More Ways to Rank Clinical, Counseling & Applied Psychology 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 Clinical, Counseling & Applied Psychology Master's Degree Schools in the Rocky Mountains Region list to help you make the college decision.
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It is difficult to beat University of Denver if you want to pursue a master's degree in clinical, counseling & applied psychology. Located in the city of Denver, DU is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.
Soon after graduating, clinical psychology master's recipients usually make an average of $48,123 in their early careers.
University of Utah is a great decision for individuals pursuing a master's degree in clinical, counseling & applied psychology. U of U is a very large public university located in the medium-sized city of Salt Lake City.
Clinical, Counseling & Applied Psychology master's degree recipients from University of Utah earn a boost of around $15,184 over the typical income of clinical, counseling & applied psychology majors.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in clinical, counseling & applied psychology has to look into University of Northern Colorado. Located in the medium-sized city of Greeley, University of Northern Colorado is a public university with a medium-sized student population.
After graduation, clinical psychology master's recipients typically earn about $50,573 in the first five years of their career.
It's hard to beat Adams State University if you want to pursue a master's degree in clinical, counseling & applied psychology. Adams State is a small public university located in the town of Alamosa.
Students who graduate with their master's from the clinical psychology program report average early career income of $49,131.
Colorado State is a very large public university located in the city of Fort Collins.
Master's recipients from the clinical, counseling & applied psychology major at Colorado State University - Fort Collins get $17,103 more than the standard college grad with the same degree shortly after graduation.
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.