Brookings Institute compared median salaries of graduates with the expected median salaries of a like pool (for the same college) without having attended college. Here are the results I took away for highly selected colleges, given in expected percentage increase. I also give the median mid-career salaries from the study.
Note: Some schools didn’t have enough data to be ranked.
Extremely Important Note:
Be very careful using this data.
First, it was gleaned from on line sources such as PayScale and LinkedIn. Why? Because many universities, though they claim to be non-profit, don’t release proprietary data. (They apparently don’t think it would be fair to release results data – too confusing for the public, too complicated, they say.)
Second, schools change. Thus, what was your parent’s education at one university may not even be close to your education at that same university. It is probably worse, no fault of yours.
So, here are the results.
For all graduates
| Cal Tech | 55% | $126,200 |
| MIT | 55% | $131,700 |
| Stanford University | 53% | $133,700 |
| Harvey Mudd College | 50% | $137,800 |
| Rose-Hulman | 47% | $115,700 |
| Rice University | 43% | $119,300 |
| UC – Berkeley | 42% | $119,100 |
| Carnegie Mellon University | 40% | $117,000 |
| Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | 39% | $112,500 |
| Georgia Institute of Technology | 39% | $112,600 |
| Harvard University | 38% | $122,700 |
| Williams College | 38% | $114,500 |
| Duke University | 38% | $113,000 |
| Yale University | 38% | $124,600 |
| Princeton University | 37% | $119,000 |
| Carleton College | 37% | $111,500 |
| Cornell University | 37% | $114,500 |
| Brown University | 36% | $117,400 |
| University of Pennsylvania | 33% | $115,900 |
| Tufts University | 32% | $119,700 |
| University of Notre Dame | 30% | $110,400 |
| Case Western Reserve University | 30% | $101,300 |
| University of Chicago | 29% | $108,800 |
| Vanderbilt University | 28% | $107,100 |
| Columbia University | 27% | $103,300 |
| Georgetown University | 26% | $111,800 |
| Wesleyan University | 26% | $100,300 |
| Johns Hopkins University | 26% | $103,900 |
| University of Southern California | 25% | $100,600 |
| Dartmouth College | 25% | $108,200 |
| Pomona College | 25% | $106,600 |
| Washington University – St Louis | 22% | $109,300 |
| University of Michigan | 20% | $95,000 |
| Emory University | 19% | $94,000 |
| Grinnell College | 15% | $86,200 |
| Hamilton College | 12% | $89,000 |
| Northeastern University | 11% | $90,000 |
| Wellesley College | 7% | $80,800 |
| Swarthmore College | ||
| Bates College | ||
| Claremont McKenna College | ||
| Amherst College | ||
| Bowdoin College | ||
| Haverford College | ||
| Rockefeller University | ||
| Northwestern University | $103,500 | |
| Franklin W Olin College of Eng. | ||
| Northwestern Polytechnic | ||
| Webb Institute |
For graduates who go no higher than an undergraduate degree
| Cal Tech | 49% | $126,200 |
| MIT | 45% | $128,800 |
| Rose – Hulman | 44% | $114,100 |
| Carleton College | 43% | $117,700 |
| Stanford University | 41% | $126,400 |
| Harvey Mudd College | 40% | $133,800 |
| Rice University | 40% | $119,900 |
| Georgia Institute of Technology | 34% | $111,700 |
| Tufts University | 33% | $123,600 |
| Williams College | 33% | $110,700 |
| University of California-Berkeley | 33% | $114,200 |
| Brown University | 32% | $114,500 |
| Carnegie Mellon University | 32% | $111,700 |
| Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | 32% | $110,100 |
| Harvard University | 32% | $118,200 |
| Cornell University | 31% | $111,100 |
| Duke University | 30% | $108,000 |
| Princeton University | 29% | $113,900 |
| University of Notre Dame | 27% | $108,400 |
| Yale University | 27% | $115,100 |
| University of Pennsylvania | 26% | $112,200 |
| Swarthmore College | 25% | $109,000 |
| Case Western Reserve University | 25% | $99,400 |
| Vanderbilt University | 23% | $103,400 |
| Washington University in St Louis | 20% | $107,100 |
| Dartmouth College | 19% | $104,700 |
| Georgetown University | 18% | $108,200 |
| Columbia University | 18% | $101,100 |
| Johns Hopkins University | 18% | $98,900 |
| University of Southern California | 17% | $98,000 |
| University of Chicago | 17% | $102,000 |
| Wesleyan University | 17% | $91,300 |
| University of Michigan-Ann Arbor | 13% | $91,400 |
| Bates College | 12% | $91,500 |
| Hamilton College | 11% | $87,200 |
| Claremont McKenna College | 10% | $96,000 |
| Emory University | 9% | $86,100 |
| Pomona College | 8% | $92,000 |
| Northeastern University | 7% | $88,600 |
| Grinnell College | 7% | $78,500 |
| Wellesley College | 3% | $77,700 |
| Amherst College | ||
| Bowdoin College | ||
| Haverford College | $115,000 | |
| Rockefeller University | ||
| Northwestern University | $98,400 | |
| Franklin W Olin College of Eng. | ||
| Northwestern Polytechnic University | ||
| Webb Institute | ||
Recent Comments