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.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 38 schools in the Middle Atlantic Region to determine which ones were the best for social work students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 7,878 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. 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 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 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 full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for social work students working on their master's degree.
The social work school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Social Work Master's Degree Schools in the Middle Atlantic Region.
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Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in social work has to look into New York University. NYU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large city of New York.
Master's recipients from the social work degree program at New York University earn $4,525 more than the typical college graduate in this field when they enter the workforce.
Rutgers University - New Brunswick is a great option for students pursuing a master's degree in social work. Located in the small city of New Brunswick, Rutgers New Brunswick is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the social work program make around $54,225 in the first couple years of their career.
Fordham University is a good decision for students interested in a master's degree in social work. Fordham U is a large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Bronx.
Those social work students who get their master's degree from Fordham University earn $3,574 more than the standard social work student.
Hunter is a fairly large public college located in the large city of New York.
Social Work master's degree recipients from Hunter College receive an earnings boost of approximately $7,400 over the typical earnings of social work graduates.
Adelphi is a moderately-sized private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Garden City.
Master's recipients from the social work degree program at Adelphi University get $2,494 more than the average college graduate in this field 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.
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:
