If you plan on getting your master's degree in pastoral counseling & specialized ministries, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #100 in the country in terms of popularity. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries Master's Degree Schools in California ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 185 master's degrees in pastoral counseling & specialized ministries during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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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
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to pastoral counseling & specialized ministries students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other pastoral counseling & specialized ministries students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How easy is it for pastoral counseling & specialized ministries 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 pastoral counseling & specialized ministries related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for pastoral counseling & specialized ministries 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 Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries Master's Degree Schools in California list to help you make the college decision.
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The Master's University and Seminary is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in pastoral counseling & specialized ministries. The Master's University is a small private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Santa Clarita.
Students who graduate with their master's from the pastoral counseling program report average early career earnings of $46,541.
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Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries Related Rankings by Major
One of 7 majors within the Theology & Religious Vocations area of study, Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries has other similar majors worth exploring.
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.