2025 Best International Relations & National Security Master's Degree Schools
a master's degree in
international relations & national security is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #43 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
College Factual looked at 62 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best International Relations & National Security Master's Degree Schools ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 5,262 master's degrees in international relations & national security during the <nil> academic year.
What's on this page: * Our Methodology
Choosing a Great International Relations & National Security School for Your Master's Degree

Your choice of international relations & national security for getting your master's degree school matters. This section explores some of the factors we include in our ranking and how much they vary depending on the school you select. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
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 Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their master's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your master's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
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 international relations & national security students as compared to other majors.
- Major Demand - How many other international relations & national security 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 international relations & national security 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 international relations & national security related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for international relations & national security students working on their master's degree.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best International Relations & National Security Master's Degree Schools ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.