Harvey Mudd beats Harvard as the highest starting salaries go to STEM majors. But alumni of all these schools earn six-figure median salaries during their early careers.
By Jah’I Selassie, Contributor
The choice of a university is often heavily influenced by the prospects for earnings after graduation. After all, if you’re going to spend a ton of money and several years of your life pursuing a degree, you’d like to see a high return on your investment—at least enough to pay back all those student loans.
Those who graduate from Ivy League schools earn more in part because top banking and consulting firms concentrate their recruiting on a small set of schools dominated by the Ivies. Those schools that tilt heavily to majors in STEM—science, technology, engineering and math–also have notably higher earning grads because starting salaries in those fields are higher. According to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, engineering grads from the class of 2023 were expected to start at an average of $74,405, while humanities graduates were expected to command just $52,938. Those with business degrees sat in the middle, with expected starting salaries of $62,069.
For our ranking of the 25 colleges with the highest earning graduates, we used data from Payscale and the federal College Scorecard. From Payscale, we looked at median earnings 6 years and 10 years after graduation. From the federal College Scorecard, we pulled median earnings data for graduates 6 years and 10 years after they first enrolled at an institution. Neither data source is perfect. Payscale relies on self-reported survey data, which can result in skewed information—graduates happy with their earnings might be more likely to respond. College Scorecard collects information only for those with federal student loans—not all graduates. Still, we think that averaging those four numbers produces a pretty accurate picture of which schools produce the highest earning early career alumni.
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