Social Work is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #3 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 42 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Social Work Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 5,431 master's degrees in social work during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Social Work School for Your Master's Degree
The social work master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality social work 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
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 include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a collection of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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
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 work students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of social work students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
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 work 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 work related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for social work 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 Work Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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University of Chicago is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in social work. UChicago is a large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Chicago.
Social Work master's degree recipients from University of Chicago get an earnings boost of about $2,069 above the average earnings of social work graduates.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in social work has to look into Loyola University Chicago. Loyola Chicago is a large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Chicago.
Students who graduate with their master's from the social work program report average early career earnings of $51,834.
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a master's degree in social work. Located in the city of Ann Arbor, U-M is a public university with a very large student population.
Those social work students who get their master's degree from University of Michigan - Ann Arbor receive $2,949 more than the standard social work graduate.
Ohio State University - Main Campus is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in social work. Located in the large city of Columbus, Ohio State is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the social work program report average early career income of $50,524.
UW - Madison is a fairly large public university located in the city of Madison.
Social Work master's degree recipients from University of Wisconsin - Madison receive an earnings boost of about $4,066 over the average earnings of social work majors.
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).
The social work master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality social work program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
