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 reviewed 4 schools in Virginia to determine which ones were the best for master's degree seekers in the field of social work. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 531 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 take this into account we include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination 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 colleges 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 Virginia.
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Virginia Commonwealth University is a great option for individuals interested in a master's degree in social work. VCU is a fairly large public university located in the city of Richmond.
Soon after graduating, social work master's recipients generally make about $51,707 at the beginning of their careers.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in social work needs to check out George Mason University. Located in the large suburb of Fairfax, GMU is a public university with a fairly large student population.
Those social work students who get their master's degree from George Mason University make $8,431 more than the typical social work student.
Radford University is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in social work. Located in the fringe town of Radford, Radford is a public university with a moderately-sized student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the social work program report average early career income of $49,870.
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:
