Students who recently graduated from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science are making a handsome average salary of $89,800. New grads from the California Institute of Technology, known as Caltech, are earning an impressive $83,800 on average, while new School of Engineering alumni from Stanford are bringing home $74,500. These numbers come from a survey just released by NerdScholar, the higher education unit of NerdWallet, a five-year-old personal finance website based in San Francisco. NerdWallet offers price comparisons for everything from credit cards to airport parking.
To put together the salary list, NerdScholar started with the top 100 national universities from US News & World Report’s list of top colleges plus the top 30 liberal arts schools from that list and cross-referenced those with data it culled from university career services that polled students about their salaries. It looked at starting salaries for the classes of 2011, 2012 and 2013 and averaged those numbers for each school. The list is far from comprehensive because many schools, like Harvard, Yale and Brown don’t release salary information. Those schools simply aren’t on the list. There are more than 4,500 degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the U.S. and NerdScholar only tracks a fraction of those. But we think the numbers are informative because they offer hard figures that show how much new grads from some of the nation’s top programs earn.
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NerdScholar was able to get data for 184 specific schools within 57 institutions. It published the top 25 but it provided me with all of its data so I’ve listed the top 50 below. Our slide show highlights the top 10.
Many schools, like Carnegie Mellon, do a breakdown of salaries for schools within the university including computer science, engineering ($68,300) and business ($65,000). Not surprisingly, most of the top salary-getters have diplomas in those disciplines. But other schools like Princeton (No. 18 at $63,700), and Rice (No. 36 at $60,000) report salaries for the graduating classes as a whole, which include liberal arts, fine arts and social science majors. One standout, given the assumption that fine arts majors do poorly in the job market: graduates of Carnegie Mellon’s College of Fine Arts came in at No. 24 on the list with an average starting salary of $62,100. CMU's humanities school, Dietrich College of Humanities & Social Sciences, also did well at No. 32, with an average starting salary of $60,700.
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For the schools that provide no salary information, NerdScholar tracks other useful data. Click here, enter a school’s name, and you can see what percent of the undergraduate class is employed, what percent is in graduate school and the breakdown of which careers students are choosing. For instance at the University of Chicago, 51% of students reported that they were employed upon graduating, 20% were heading to grad school and 30% were looking for work. The top three professions for Chicago grads are finance/investing at 17%, education at 17% and health/medicine at 12%. NerdScholar’s tool lets you compare statistics at up to four schools at once.
Since the schools gather the numbers from students across the board, they are arguably more reliable than the self-reported salaries that make up the database for salary site PayScale whose controversial return-on-investment research I reported on yesterday. People give their salary info to PayScale in exchange for detailed salary data collected on the site, usually because they want a new job or a raise. That self-selects for folks who are not contented with the compensation in their current jobs. NerdScholar’s data comes from new grads across the board.
Those who found work upon graduation from one of the top 50 schools are in good shape: They’re making at least $56,000 a year.
Here is a list of the top 50 schools:
1. Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science
Average salary: $89,800
2. California Institute of Technology
Average salary: $83,750
3. Stanford University, School of Engineering
Average salary: $74,500
4. Harvey Mudd College
Average salary: $72,500
5. New York University, College of Nursing
Average salary: $79,200
6. University of Pennsylvania, School of Engineering and Applied Science
Average salary: $70,100
7. Texas A&M University, Dwight Look College of Engineering
Average salary: $69,100
8. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Average salary: $68,300
9. Carnegie Mellon University, College of Engineering
Average salary: $68,300
10. Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Computing
Average salary: $67,700
11. Cornell University, College of Engineering
Average salary: $67,400
12. University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School
Average salary: $67,100
13. University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science
Average salary: $65,900
14. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Engineering
Average salary: $65,800
15. Colorado School of Mines
Average salary: $65,800
16. Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business
Average salary: $65,000
17. Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Engineering
Average salary: $64,000
18. Princeton University
Average salary: $63,700
19. Stevens Institute of Technology
Average salary: $63,200
20. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, School of Chemical Sciences
Average salary: $63,100
21. University of Michigan, Ross School of Business
Average salary: $62,600
22. University of Notre Dame, College of Engineering
Average salary: $62,600
23. New York University, Leonard Stern School of Business
Average salary: $62,200
24. Carnegie Mellon University, College of Fine Arts
Average salary: $62,100
25. Lehigh University, P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science
Average salary: $62,000
26. Carnegie Mellon University, Mellon College of Science
Average salary: $61,300
27. Washington University in St. Louis, Olin Business School
Average salary: $61,100
28. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Average salary: $61,100
29. Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business
Average salary:$60,900
30. University of Pittsburgh, Swanson School of Engineering
Average salary: $60,900
31. University of Alabama, College of Engineering
Average salary: $60,700
32. Carnegie Mellon University, Dietrich College of Humanities & Social Sciences
Average salary: $60,700
33. Purdue University, College of Engineering
Average salary: $60,000
34. Rice University
Average salary: $60,000
35. Michigan State University, College of Engineering
Average salary: $59,700
36. Syracuse University, School of Information Studies
Average salary: $59,600
37. Ohio State University, College of Engineering
Average salary: $59,500
38. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Engineering
Average salary: $58,000
39. University of Notre Dame, Mendoza College of Business
Average salary: $57,700
40. Lehigh University, College of Business & Economics
Average salary: $57,500
41. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Arts and Sciences
Average salary: $57,200
42. Vanderbilt University
Average salary: $56,900
43. University of Delaware, College of Engineering
Average salary: $56,700
44. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, College of Engineering
Average salary: $56,600
45. Pennsylvania State University
Average salary: $56,600
46. Clemson University, College of Engineering and Science
Average salary: $56,500
47. University of Pennsylvania, School of Nursing
Average salary: $56,500
48. Purdue University, College of Science
Average salary: $56,400
49. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, School of Business
Average salary: $56,100
50. Syracuse University, L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science
Average salary: $56,100
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