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.
College Factual looked at 2 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 199 master's degrees in pastoral counseling & specialized ministries during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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 pastoral counseling & specialized ministries students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - The number of pastoral counseling & specialized ministries 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 pastoral counseling & specialized ministries 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 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.
More Ways to Rank Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries Schools
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries Master's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Pastoral Counseling & Specialized Ministries in the Southwest Region
The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a master's degree in pastoral counseling & specialized ministries.
Top Southwest Region Schools for a Master's in Pastoral Counseling
Any student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in pastoral counseling & specialized ministries needs to check out Dallas Baptist University. Located in the city of Dallas, DBU is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population.
Students who graduate with their master's from the pastoral counseling program state that they receive average early career wages of $40,502.
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.
