I’ll take this to mean you don’t have a single example that can be verified.
The referenced quote included master’s and PhD, which make up the bulk of graduate degrees. This is true for grads of all selective colleges I have seen that report this data, even selective LACs. For example, Smith reports that 3/4 of the advanced degrees pursued by grads were master’s or PhDs. The info on NerdScholar states that <6% of Haverford grads pursued MDs or JDs. You mentioned JDs in social sciences pulling up the average. Even if we assume that 100% of JDs majored in social science fields, it’s still not enough to pull the advanced degree ratio in social sciences up to match engineering.</p>
<p>While grads with engineering degrees often can achieve a decent salary with only a bachelors degree, many pursue higher degrees, particularly a master’s . I did two coterm engineering degree at Stanford, combining a bachelor’s with 2 master’s in engineering fields. A noteworthy portion of the engineering students in my class also pursued grad degrees.</p>
<p>With few exceptions, the schools at the top of this ranking are engineer0ng-heavy schools. As previously noted, the earnings data used to calculate ROI represent only the earnings data for graduates whose highest degree is a Bachelors. Engineers and computer scientists do extremely well on that metric. Excluded are doctors, lawyers, MBAs, dentists, veterinarians, Ph.D.s in any field, and holders of Masters degrees in any field.</p>
<p>Well, that’s because a lot of CMC students go directly to I-Banking, finance, and other pre-professional ventures right after graduating. These jobs are also known for paying well.</p>
<p>But to your second point, yes. CMC deserves much kudos. It has vastly increased its reputation, perhaps the most of any school as young as it is. Did you hear that their campaign strategy was by far the largest of any liberal arts college, earning over 600 million dollars? </p>
<p>It’s a very unique school (what other top undergrad school has a specialty in economics, government, and related field?) with strengths in the traditional liberal arts as well. I expect it to become a top 5 LAC at some point in the future; that’s how fast its reputation is building.</p>
<p>The large jump in 2013 and not reported for 2010/11 both likely relate to lack of data since CMC is a small school, with few alumni on Payscale. An archive.org view of the 2011 CMC page on Payscale from 2011 specifically states, “not enough data.” The number of CMC alumni reporting on Payscale seems to have decreased from 2010/2011, yet Payscale no longer states “not enough data” and instead tries to make a crude estimate.</p>
<p>A better measure is looking at the salary info reported by the CMC alumni survey. The division of majors at CMC and average CMC starting salary (based on alumni survey) in those fields for 2012 is below:</p>
<p>^^I don’t know what you meant by “strengths in the traditional liberal arts”. I never heard of CMC being very strong in humanities or sciences. Its offering in languages and foreign studies/literature seems more limited than other peers. But it seems to be a great LAC if you are pre-professional but want a LAC environment at the same time. </p>
<p>Economics-Accounting, Economics and Engineering, Environment, Economics, and Politics, Legal Studies, Management-Engineering, Science and Management, Financial Economics, Scientific Modeling, Philosophy & Public Affairs, BA/MA program in Finance not only sound preprofessional but gear toward fields that pay well (government, accounting, finance, management, modeling). Many research universities don’t even offer accounting but at CMC, you can get enough accounting to sit for the CPA exam.</p>
<p>The ROI ranking shows one thing many of us already know: ROI is much more of a function of what field you chose than which school you went to.</p>
For this analysis the additional required questions are what were the undergraduate majors of all the folks who get MDs, law degrees, and MBAs. I am sure these folks disproportionally come from social science majors … and the payscale analysis does not include all these folks in it’s analysis.</p>
<p>I’m a Claremont student that goes to Pomona. As I can cross-enroll in whatever college, it would be useful for me to know what the strengths and weaknesses of each school are. I know what departments are strongest in which schools, either due to word of mouth, or student ratings, or both. </p>
<p>Also, while econ is clearly the big thing at CMC, other traditional liberal art majors make up around 9 of the 15 most popular majors at CMC. There are more history and psychology majors at CMC than at Pomona on a percentage basis.</p>
<p>^I just did a search for Goldwater winners in the past 6-7 years and CMC almost has nobody. OTOH, Oberlin and Pomona have noticeably more winners. I am not convinced CMC has “excellent” natural sciences program.</p>
<p>Also, popularity doesn’t automatically translate to excellence. History and psychology are two of the most popular majors in many schools. That said, CMC does seem to have an excellent econ program.</p>
<p>By the way, 30% is a very high percentage even for econ major. As a point of reference, the percentage of econ majors is 13% even at Northwestern, which has a world renown econ program. Furthermore, CMC got another 15% majoring in government. These numbers are consistent to what I speculated earlier about CMC being the most preprofessional LAC out three.</p>
<p>It’d be pointless to argue about whether a department at a school, especially at a tiny liberal arts college, is good or excellent, as this is a subjective impression. My remarks come from people who have attended CMC [or have been deeply invested with a department from another college] and shared their experiences with multiple academic departments that they have experiences with, and the departments I listed have been named as being some of CMC’s strongest non-econ/government majors. It’s difficult to be able to pinpoint the strongest departments on statistics alone; hearsay from others actually counts for a lot, especially at a smaller school. For example, while not a CMC example, how many would know math is one of Pomona’s best departments? It’s not something I knew simply by looking at statistics or reading on the website, but something I learned from being involved with multiple academic departments at Pomona and being closely tied to a significant number of faculty. One thing though- competitive fellowships don’t necessarily reflect on a department, as not everyone applies to them.</p>
<p>The bigger point was that CMC does in fact have strengths in other areas of liberal arts besides its specialties. The fact that more than half of the majors come from other areas is by itself enough to show that CMC is not <em>exclusively</em> its specialties.</p>
Over 700,000 students get master’s degrees each year, more than 10x the number of JDs and MDs combined, and engineering undergrads are actually overrepresented among MBAs. The NCES indicates that there are more than twice as many social science grads than engineering/CS grads, so we’d expect a more than 2:1 ratio with equal representation. Yet engineering majors had a far better ratio among every single MBA program I checked. For example, it’s a 1:1.2 ratio among Stanford MBAs and 1:0.8 at Michigan. That is not a misprint. Engineering majors outnumber social sciences majors by a good margin among Michigan MBAs – [Admissions</a> - Stephen M. Ross School of Business](<a href=“http://www.bus.umich.edu/Admissions/Mba/Profile.htm]Admissions”>http://www.bus.umich.edu/Admissions/Mba/Profile.htm) . The number of MDs and JDs are quite minor compared to the number of MBAs. It’s not enough to reduce the engineering majors’ overrepresentation among non-MS/PhDs advanced grads. And even if we are do consider the small percentage of MD degrees, the most common undergrad majors are going to be ones that fit well with the pre-med requirements and passion for medicine, such as bio and chem, not social sciences. I’d expect that the rate of pre-med is much higher among biomedical engineering or bioengineering majors than nearly all social sciences.</p>
<p>@fractalmstr - Thanks for the support. ROI is really the key. The days of going to college solely for an educational experience are over. College is just too expensive to mess around anymore. It truly is an investment. I never said to my kid, “College is a time to be free and study where your heart and desires lead you.” Sorry, when the stakes are this high and college costs as much as an average home purchase, it is crazy to approach college without an endgame bottom line result in mind.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus – As always your comments are great. I agree, major is the key to employment after graduation. That is why my kid is a mechanical engineering major. Fortunately, he chose the major himself and it is an expression of who he is. So, I did not force anything on him. It was a perfect fit. However, let’s say he chose psychology as a major. Well, I would have encouraged him in that direction as well. But, I would have made sure that he was going in a direction where he could be employed. I would have directed him to get an MSW, a clinical psychology designation, or similar advanced degree and gone into the much needed counseling vocations in either the private and/or public sectors.</p>
<p>If he chose sociology or gender studies, I would have made him pay for college himself. Actually, I was getting my car repaired at the dealership the other day (warranty repair - I do not pay dealership prices) and spent some time looking at the beautiful new car models as I was waiting. While I was kicking the tires of a new car, I was approached by a new sales person. Great kid and I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. Turned out he was a recent UCLA graduate with a degree in sociology. The only job he could get was selling cars. He told me how much he envied his girlfriend who got a business degree at Cal State Long Beach and was fully employed making more than twice his income. He told me that if he had a chance to do it all over again, he would have chosen a more practical major.</p>
<p>The most popular major among LSAT takers in 2008 was political science by far, but they made up only about 20% of the total. The next most popular major, English, made up about 8% of the total. Business management, psychology, history, and criminal justice were the next most popular majors.
[url=<a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1430654]LSAT”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1430654]LSAT</a> Scores of Economics Majors: The 2008-2009 Class Update by Michael Nieswiadomy :: SSRN<a href=“see%20table%202%20at%20the%20back%20of%20the%20paper”>/url</a></p>
<p>However, it seems to more pre-professional, rather than pre-PhD, oriented. None of the economics courses nor the major requires any more than calculus 1 and AP-level statistics.</p>
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