@eyemgh @sevmom Can I ask where do you find such detailed salary data comparison, not just by school like CMU vs UMN, but also by geographical area Pittsburg vs NYC, and even by major CS vs ME? So interesting.
I canât speak for anything but College Scorecard, but for that reason, they use the median. It doesnât let extreme outliers at either end distort the average like mean does.
Iâm not sure how @sevmom pulled such granular data, but my interest is piqued. What I reported came from College Scorecard. Like any data, it has potential biases. In this case, it reports only grads who had some sort of federal aid, either Pell or federally backed loans. It misses out on full pay and students who got non-federally backed loans. What I like about it is that it isnât self reported. @Data10 has been deeper into it than the web based interface allows and may be able to comment.
For CA specifically, mostly SE/CS, but some other engineering, levels.fyi has some eyepopping compensations. It also breaks down salary vs. options.
CMU and Minnesota both provide detailed first destination reports for their engineering department on their websites- top employers, salaries, where their graduates end up, percentages going to grad school and what grad schools they are going to, etc. Of course, not all grads bother to reply to post grad surveys so it will not capture everything or everyone. Many schools have that kind of info online if you google the school and things like first destination, post grad survey.
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The bias in that data is that itâs self reported. Itâs human nature to report higher salaries and not to report lower ones, especially when theyâre linked to destinations. If you know other students and where they landed, you can intuit their salary.
You can access all the raw data in its full glory - over a quarter million rows of Excel data - at https://data.ed.gov/dataset/college-scorecard-all-data-files-through-6-2020/resources
âMost Recent Data by Field of Studyâ. Updated within the last month.
You can delete a vast majority of the columns - the 2 year average salary should be evident from the column header (or Iâll edit this and provide when Iâm home).
Select both Computer Science and Computer Information Sciences (or something like that), as many major programs are coded under this.
You can also download an excerpt at https://thirdway.imgix.net/Program_Level_PEP.xlsx which provides a cost (not sure on the source - appears to be low for some schools, maybe in-state and tuition only) and estimated payback timelines.
One thing to keep in mind that this canât represent is the cost of living/purchasing power of these salaries. To pick two that have data with which I am familiar, CMU Outcome data shows at least 105 of 186 grads in high cost areas (NYC, Palo Alto, etc) where Purdueâs Data Digest shows approx 100 of 330 for the Science college (which is mostly CS) with the most popular destination being Indiana. Nerdwalletâs COL calculator showâs CMUâs 160k in SF to be equal to 73k in Indianapolis, IN. Iâm sure CMU would be higher by fully weighting every data point, but not double.
I suspect the top 10-15 salaries skew to high cost areas and others tend to be more local. Iâm not aware of any COL-adjusted outcomes comparisons at the program level. It would be quite interesting.
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not sure from where Minnesota came from. I live in Virginia, interested in VA colleges and CMU/UPENN etc.
Another poster asked.
Thatâs what I was getting at. Lots of data with all this stuff is dependent on who has reported, where they are working, etc. It is all potentially flawed . Computer Science has blown up big time and lots of kids seem to want to do CS these days.
OP , Only you know what your budget is and what you want to pay. We donât.
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more than the budget etc, the kid has a good GPA score and good SAT score. The out of reach colleges are now in reach. We donât want to restrict him to VA. I know the schools here are great. We would like to apply to CMU/UPENN/DUKE and a few others just to explore. The big question is with the world shrinking and everyone working from home lately and has become the norm, does the big University names still carry its weight. I heard that google does not even look for graduates anymore. They give you a problem and have the kid solve it in record time. I am sure the peer group and the motivation, the side projects etc adds a lot. What does he get in a top school like CMU that he cannot in UVA. That is a million dollar question that i am wrapped around right now. Yes, the additional expense of staying OOS, the travel, other expenses are in the play as well.
You might want to look at this question from the other side: âWhat does your kid wantâ. If your kid wants a basic CS education then many schools can fill that need. If, he is interested in certain specialties then his choices may be narrowed. He should sit down and compare the curriculum at a couple of schools (say CMU and UVA), and see how each school stacks up. Perhaps your kid does not really know where he wants to focus (CS is a broad filed). In that case a school with more options may be better able to meet his needs as figures out what he wants.
A note on Google and similar companies. It is true that Google no longer requires a degree to be considered for a position. It is incorrect that all they require is to pass a âcode testâ. Passing a code test gets you in the pool of possible candidates. One you are in the pool a team can select you for further interviews (technical and behavioral) based on your resume. This is where college graduates have the edge as they typically have more meaningful projects and research to talk about.
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So many kids say they want CS or engineering these days , many of them will change their minds. So be sure itâs a school that is an overall good fit, socially and financially. Many 17 year olds want what they want, including schools that are really out of the family budget without involving more debt, seem more prestigious so thatâs where they want to go, are influenced by peer pressure, rankings, etc. We just donât know the whole situation here and how much the family really can pay. If they are wealthy,or low income, itâs probably not as much of an issue. Our oldest was a very top student who ended up at UVA years ago. It was the best social and financial fit as a Virginia resident . And we had a younger child to consider (sounds like the OP does as well). He is very successful.
He was not an only child so we felt we needed to reserve money for his brother. And he also made a point of saying that as well, that he wanted his brother to have plenty of money for college. He had a sense of that aspect as he had a good friend whose older brother was allowed to go to Vanderbilt full pay. This kid joked to us that his parents had blown all their money on his brother and he was probably going to end up at a state school. And thatâs exactly what happened! Our son liked the idea of Duke in particular , but it would have cost substantially more. And he loved UVA. Duke admissions still sent him an email encouraging him to apply after their application date was supposedly closed!
OP,Duke and CMU seem very different if you are going to be looking at private schools. Look at cost, but also fit. UVA, Virginia Tech, William and Mary are absolutely not the right fits for all top kids in Virginia but we are definitely lucky to have those options. It may indeed be the million dollar question-Are Duke, CMU, Penn worth paying more for? It wasnât for our family, but may be for yours, depending on your circumstances. So,maybe, maybe not, and a lot of success will still depend on the individual, and what they make of their education, regardless of school. Many top kids these days are looking for merit aid too if they donât want to stay in Virginia for college. Good luck!
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Thatâs what our son did. We set a top number of $200k. That was a few years ago when the full pay, most expensive schools were $260K. He concentrated on privates where heâd get merit and publics where we had tuition exchanges or the net total was still below $200k. He had very specific requirements too like smaller classes, specific locations, or better, locations he wanted to avoid, first year in major, etc. It worked out great. He got a BS/MS and because he was funded, he was still way under budget. He has a great job, and for a ME makes quite a bit more than the mid-career national average, just 2 years out.
Donât overthink it. Pick a budget that will not cramp your family or your upcoming kidâs opportunities.
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I agree . Donât overthink it. And the reality is that top instate students in Virginia can and do get rejected by the most sought after Virginia schools . There are just not enough seats to go around and they allow about a third of seats to go to out of state and international students. And use holistic admissions and have increasing diversity, first gen goals, etc. It is not a given that even an instate kid with very high stats will get into UVA, William and Mary, or Virginia Tech engineering. That is also some of the reason that some top stat Virginia kids end up out of state. There was a kid on the UVA forum last year, who had 1560 SATâs and great grades and ECâs who if I recall correctly, was waitlisted at UVA and VT engineering and ended up at Clemson. That kind of thing seems to be happening more and more.
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Thank you for the info. Yes, the competition has sky rocketed in the last few years, fueled by students prefer in-state vs out of state. Also, SAT has become optional. Is that true for 2022 as well. So, what aspects should we be looking at when submitting applications that will help to be considered. What would the colleges look for in the application, especially if you want a career in CS. My kid is going to CIT specialty school. He did his intern with a software company that later hired him for flexible work hours to continue that relationship. Would those help.
At UVA and VT , you apply to engineering, not CS specifically. Iâm not sure how it works at other schools youâre interested in, but hopefully someone else here does.
Thatâs school dependent.
From his perspective, look for intangibles. A kid that hates small towns and canât be without the bustle of the city wouldnât thrive at Cornell, Purdue or Cal Pol, as examples. Conversely, hate the city traffic and noise, etc. CMU, Penn, and MIT, again, just to name a few, arenât great fits. What about weather? Other hobbies like hiking, surfing, skiing, etc.?
Too late to change anything substantively now. Selective schools recognize fluff added with the intent of padding an application. Iâm sure there will be plenty to pull from with his CIT and internship experiences. The application will drive the process of the specifics that theyâll want.
I want to make one comment on earnings in CS without singling anyone out. Those earnings are not just influenced by location but also by the type of company grads work for. Many of the best jobs are at startups and small companies that do not pay as much initially as a Microsoft or Amazon or Apple, but provide an incredible experience and the potential for major paydays when their tech company is sold or recapped by new VCâs. I would also add that if a young person wants to be a CTO of a company by their early 30âs, big tech may not be the way to go.
As many others have pointed out on this board in other threads, what you know matters a lot more in CS interviews than where you went to school. Pedigree is simply not valued that highly in a field where many of the senior people at small and mid-sized companies are still self-taught.
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No doubt true.
The reason I posted that data though is that the OP is looking for justification (if there is any) to spend a bunch more than on their very good state flagships. You have to use something tangible.
I agree that itâs far more about what you know that where you went, but not all companies are as openminded as Google. Rightly or wrongly, many have pet schools.
I do know the startup space reasonably well, as my son and all his roommates work for startups. I can tell you, none of their companies would hire anyone without a degree unless they were a well pedigreed industry veteran.
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Seems like Google has their pet schools as well (LinkedIn) 
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Agreed! Although Google may be as egalitarian as some claim, I think the best route in, even if they are, is to have a solid pedigree. It lends gravitas to oneâs application. They have to vet candidates somehow. They donât even acknowledge most applicants, let alone give every one of them a coding test.