Revealed-- Employer Preferences of The Top Colleges

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Brown grad with a humanities degree here. My starting salary wasn’t high (though was totally fine), but I had multiple offers and a job waiting for me at graduation. I now make $750k in an arts job that at least isn’t actively making the world worse that I didn’t have to go to grad school for. Starting salary isn’t everything.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mid-career numbers for MIT pretty lackluster compared to Harvard and Penn or Stanford. or Yale or Princeton. I wonder why?

a higher percent goes to PhD/academia

Nope. It’s that engineering is a solid but not great paying career.

Its not all about money….but also the MIT and CMU engineers we know were making over 300k ten years ago in their 30s. Now making 450-500k plus bonuses. Marry either one of them to another similar salary (which is what they each did) and thats a mega rich family. What on earth kind of money does Dcum think you need in life? MIT and other top engineering school grads make very high salaries

[Anonymous]

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Revealed Employer Preferences in T50(ish) Colleges

Datasets Used

US Department of Education College Scorecard Dataset 2019-2020

Niche (Reference Point)

Methodology

A set of schools given an A+ ranking in Academics on Niche. This is a bit subjective but the 49 research universities and 29 liberal arts colleges. From reported 2021 post-graduation income using the DoE Scorecard for each school, by major - then comparing that income with the national average income for the major. Each was indexed and ranked by a premium taken from the averaged difference between all majors and the national averages by college.

Divided colleges in to five groups:

Very-High Premium Schools (+$30,000 Starting Salary Premium)

Harvey Mudd

CalTech

MIT

UPenn

Stanford

Harvard

While it's interesting only 3 of the 5 HYPSM schools made it on here, given the intense connections to Wall Street and Silicon Valley at these schools and relatively weaker grad school prep culture than say - Princeton, the degree premium is a bit less surprising considering the likelihood these schools have stronger network effects in the private sector than their peers.

High Premium Schools (+$15,000 Starting Salary Premium)

Dartmouth

Duke

Johns Hopkins

CMU

Yale

Claremont McKenna

Georgetown

UChicago

Columbia

Northwestern

Vanderbilt

Princeton

Rice

Cornell

UC Berkeley

NYU

Much of the T20 here so no real surprises. NYU's strengths in its business and journalism department + wage inflation for high numbers of graduates residing in New York may inflate it's graduation premium.

Moderate Premium Schools (+$10,000 Starting Salary Premium)

Washington & Lee

Bowdoin

Georgia Tech

Northeastern

Notre Dame

BC

Pomona

Amherst

Villanova

USC

Emory

Williams

Swarthmore

Barnard

Colgate

Wake Forest

Middlebury

BU

UVA

Tufts

WashU St. Louis

Wellesley

Elite LAC's and big private research universities that either lower end T20's that lack "breakout" programs or are part of Boston's "magnificent seven". Also a few top public colleges. This zone seems to represent the premium placed on research university degrees compared to equivalent liberal arts schools as well as either top schools with poor career services or just-below-top schools significant institutional clout.

Low Premium Schools (+$0 Starting Salary Premium)

Trinity (Texas)

Bucknell

Wesleyan

Brandeis

Lehigh

UMichigan

UT Austin

Colby

Brown

UCLA

Davidson

URochester

UW Madison

Haverford

Case Western

Bates

UNC Chapel Hill

Bryn Mawr

UIUC

UC San Diego

Hamilton

URichmond

UMiami

UFlorida

William & Mary

Kenyon

UGeorgia

Vassar

Public Colleges and Liberal Arts Colleges continue to get depressed premiums on the market compared to their private school peers. The only major outlier is Brown, which may be due to a mix of student culture and more interest in liberal arts style education.

Disutility Colleges (Less than $0 Starting Salary Premium)

Tulane

Macalester

Carleton

Grinnell

Smith

Colorado

Not too many surprises here other than Brown maybe

[Anonymous]

It isn't surprising to see some SLACs missing. The emphasis on career and entrepreneurship to maximize earnings isn't everything for a good subset of those student. However for pre-professional education, especially law and medicine, SLACs do as well as anyone.

[Anonymous]

OP is copying from a reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/16tenex/revealed_employer_preferences_in_t50ish_colleges/

There's lots of nuance that would need to be discussed, like the fact that this is one year post-graduation, supposedly not factoring in students in grad school/law school/med school

Or maybe just read the reddit thread.

[Anonymous]

This list is ridiculous. I’ve known plenty of Bucknell grads and haven’t met a single one who doesn’t earn well above average. Most have been working on The Street in client-facing roles since graduation. And whatever you think of Tulane (an endless debate on this board) are we really supposed to believe its graduates earn less than the national average for college grads?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Brown grad with a humanities degree here. My starting salary wasn’t high (though was totally fine), but I had multiple offers and a job waiting for me at graduation. I now make $750k in an arts job that at least isn’t actively making the world worse that I didn’t have to go to grad school for. Starting salary isn’t everything.

Congratulations!!

[Anonymous]

I love the people who feel they must quote the entire long OP just to say a few words.

[Anonymous]

1. OP stole this from

https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/16tenex/revealed_employer_preferences_in_t50ish_colleges/

2. It's College Scorecard data.

The College Scorecard dataset only considers data from students receiving federal student aid.

Several groups are left out,
including undocumented and international students,
on top of those in more financially advantageous situations

It also doesn't consider cost of living in the area of employment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. OP stole this from

https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/16tenex/revealed_employer_preferences_in_t50ish_colleges/

2. It's College Scorecard data.

The College Scorecard dataset only considers data from students receiving federal student aid.

Several groups are left out,
including undocumented and international students,
on top of those in more financially advantageous situations

It also doesn't consider cost of living in the area of employment.

Yeah this data is not really worth discussing.

[Anonymous]

Another stupid list. *yawn*

[Anonymous]

Isn't this already basically what WSJ and Forbes are doing in their rankings? Doesn't really seem new to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mid-career numbers for MIT pretty lackluster compared to Harvard and Penn or Stanford. or Yale or Princeton. I wonder why?

a higher percent goes to PhD/academia

Nope. It’s that engineering is a solid but not great paying career.

Its not all about money….but also the MIT and CMU engineers we know were making over 300k ten years ago in their 30s. Now making 450-500k plus bonuses. Marry either one of them to another similar salary (which is what they each did) and thats a mega rich family. What on earth kind of money does Dcum think you need in life? MIT and other top engineering school grads make very high salaries

you know all outlets apparently.

https://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/massachusetts/massachusetts-institute-of-technology/salaries/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This list is ridiculous. I’ve known plenty of Bucknell grads and haven’t met a single one who doesn’t earn well above average. Most have been working on The Street in client-facing roles since graduation. And whatever you think of Tulane (an endless debate on this board) are we really supposed to believe its graduates earn less than the national average for college grads?

Of all the trolls on here, you are by FAR my favorite <3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn't this already basically what WSJ and Forbes are doing in their rankings? Doesn't really seem new to me.

WSJ used equity weighting. Nothing like this list.