Ranked #3 in popularity, social work is one of the most sought-after master's degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
College Factual looked at 12 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Social Work Master's Degree Schools in Illinois ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 2,084 master's degrees in social work to qualified students.
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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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
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 take this into account we consider a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
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 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 full 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.
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 Social Work Master's Degree Schools in Illinois list to help you make the college decision.
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Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in social work needs to take a look at University of Chicago. UChicago is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Chicago.
Those social work students who get their master's degree from University of Chicago receive $2,622 more than the standard social work grad.
Loyola University Chicago is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in social work. Loyola Chicago is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of Chicago.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the social work program earn around $51,834 in their early career salary.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a great choice for students pursuing a master's degree in social work. UIUC is a fairly large public university located in the city of Champaign.
Students who graduate with their master's from the social work program report average early career income of $50,602.
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in social work has to take a look at Aurora University. Aurora is a medium-sized private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Aurora.
Soon after graduation, social work master's recipients generally earn about $50,809 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.
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. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
