harvey mudd college

harvey mudd college
Forget U.S. News’s academic rankings and Playboy’s party-school list. For some prospective college freshmen, here’s the important question: Will I make more money if I go to Harvard, or if I go to Harvey Mudd?

PayScale, a site that collects data on salaries for different professions, argues that it can help students answer that question. Today the company is releasing an updated, gigantic data set on the salaries of graduates from hundreds of universities and colleges, as well as salaries and career choices broken down by department/major.

The numbers are from 1.2 million users of PayScale’s site who self-reported their salaries and educational credentials in a PayScale survey over the last year. While the data are not from a randomized scientific sample, they are still pretty tantalizing. Here, for example, are the rankings by median mid-career salary (minimum 10 years out of school) by university:
Full rankings are here. An important note: The data include only survey respondents whose highest academic degree is a bachelor’s. Therefore, doctors, lawyers and others in high-paying jobs that require advanced degrees are not included in the data set.

The reason for this, according to Al Lee, PayScale’s director of quantitative analysis, is that PayScale is trying to determine which undergraduate educations are the “best investment.”

“You’re thinking of buying a college. If that’s all you buy — an undergraduate degree –without having to spend more money and time and effort to get another degree,” Mr. Lee said, “you want to know what the return on that investment is.”

He also said that for many schools including alumni with advanced degrees would bring down their median salaries, because in PayScale’s sample advanced degree recipients are primarily teachers getting master’s degrees in order to teach. According to Mr. Lee’s data, teachers generally have more modest incomes than their classmates.

Some highlights from the data:

* Dartmouth College has the highest median mid-career salary (defined as salary at 10 years or greater after graduation).
* Loma Linda University has the highest median starting salary (defined as salaries within five years of graduation), a function of their strong programs in nursing, dental and allied health.
* In general, engineering schools produced the best starting salaries, and represented eight out of the top 10 schools in starting salary. On the other hand, Ivy League Schools are the best bet for mid-career pay, with five out of the top 10.
* Majors matter. Quantitative-oriented degrees – like engineering, science, mathematics and economics — filled most of the top 20 slots in both highest starting median salaries and highest mid-career median salaries.