If you plan on getting your master's degree in social sciences, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #9 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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 2 schools in West Virginia to determine which ones were the best for social sciences students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 115 master's degrees in social sciences to qualified students.
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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
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 social sciences students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other social sciences 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 social sciences 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 social sciences related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for social sciences students working on their master's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Social Sciences Master's Degree Schools in West Virginia list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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
