a master's degree in sociology is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #94 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual reviewed 5 schools in the Far Western US Region to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of sociology. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 178 master's degrees in sociology during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Sociology School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of sociology for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality sociology program can vary widely even among the top schools. 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 good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider 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 sociology students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other sociology 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 sociology 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 sociology related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for sociology 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 Sociology Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list to help you make the college decision.
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It is hard to beat Stanford University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in sociology. Located in the large suburb of Stanford, Stanford is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.More information about a master’s in sociology from Stanford University
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 sociology for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality sociology program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
