Public Health is of the hottest master's degree programs in the United States, coming in as the #14 most popular major in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.
College Factual looked at 4 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Public Health Master's Degree Schools in Virginia ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 503 master's degrees in public health to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Public Health School for Your Master's Degree
The public health master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality public health 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 consider a school'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 many resources a school devotes to public health students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - How many other public health students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
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 public health 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 public health related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for public health students working on their master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Public Health Master's Degree Schools in Virginia ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Public Health in Virginia
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in public health.
Top Virginia Schools for a Master's in Public Health
Every student who is interested in a master's degree in public health needs to take a look at George Mason University. Located in the large suburb of Fairfax, GMU is a public university with a very large student population.
Public Health master's degree recipients from George Mason University earn a boost of approximately $8,734 above the typical income of public health majors.
It's hard to beat University of Virginia - Main Campus if you want to pursue a master's degree in public health. University of Virginia is a fairly large public university located in the suburb of Charlottesville.
Those public health students who get their master's degree from University of Virginia - Main Campus earn $5,322 more than the typical public health student.
It is difficult to beat Virginia Commonwealth University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in public health. VCU is a very large public university located in the medium-sized city of Richmond.
After graduation, public health master's recipients generally earn an average of $58,177 in their early careers.
Liberty University is a great decision for students interested in a master's degree in public health. Liberty University is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Lynchburg.
Master's students who receive their degree from the public health program make about $51,495 in their early career salary.
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 public health master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality public health program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
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