History is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #51 most popular master's degree program in the country. This means you won't have too much trouble finding schools that offer the degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 4 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best History Master's Degree Schools in Virginia ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 254 master's degrees in history to qualified students.
Choosing a Great History School for Your Master's Degree
The history master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. 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 quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider 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 many resources a school devotes to history students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of history 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 much debt history students go into to obtain their master's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized history related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for history students working on their master's degree.
The history 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 History Master's Degree Schools in Virginia.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study History in Virginia
Below you'll see a list of the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in history.
George Mason University is one of the best schools in the country for getting a master's degree in history. Located in the suburb of Fairfax, GMU is a public university with a very large student population.
Those history students who get their master's degree from George Mason University receive $2,830 more than the typical history graduate.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in history has to take a look at Liberty University. Liberty University is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Lynchburg.
Master's students who receive their degree from the history program earn an average of $46,189 for their early 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.