<p>A lot of it is just being smart with ur money</p>
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<p>No, YOU don’t. Your parents do.</p>
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<p>Wikipedia claims the median household income in the town you’re from is about 48K. So presumably, at least half (and probably closer to 90%) of the people living there live on about a quarter of your notion of “decent” pay.</p>
<p>Personally, I hope to make over $100,000 right after I graduate dental school, and eventually make over $300,000, especially if I specialize. I’m probably going to have over $250,000 in student loans just for the four years of dental school, so I really hope I’ll be making that much. </p>
<p>My dad owns his own business and makes around $200,000, last year he made $250,000. It sounds like a lot, but in reality, we live comfortably, but certainly not luxuriously. We live in a “rich” town in New England, where the median income is $170,000, so we’re technically just slightly above average, haha.</p>
<p>Growing up in central NJ, and moving back to the area in a few months (not with my parents - thank God) I consider decent pay out of college to be 50-60k. I think good pay straight from school is 60-70k.</p>
<p>Mid-career, I think decent pay for a college graduate is about 100k. I’d think good mid-life pay is around 140-160k.</p>
<p>I have a feeling a lot of people will be disappointed</p>
<p>My first step is to become a real estate agent and practice for about 3 years while still studying for my B.S. in Real Estate from NYU and then get my broker’s license by the time I graduate. I eventually would like to become a real estate developer. No clue how much money they make but I assume it’s a good amount. Hopefully I’ll have at least $50,000 in the bank by the time I graduate.</p>
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You (and many others in this thread) are very optimistic about their future income…</p>
<p>This thread makes me want to throw up.</p>
<p>Knowing the kind of job market I’ll have to look forward to, I’d say with my master’s I would be happy starting out around $30,000/year. Enough to live on modestly, especially if we have a dual income household.</p>
<p>I’m not going to school to make money, I’m going to learn about something (and hopefully end up employed in something) I enjoy.</p>
<p>MLD- You may have mixed up psychologists and psychiatrists, but you’re still VERY wrong. You really don’t know what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>Psychologists for the most part do FAR more than “listen to peoples proplems.” </p>
<p>Psychologists go through a ton of training too. 4 years undergrad. ~6 years for a PhD, and then a few years to get the hours in to get licensed (you need a doctorate in the US to get licensed by the APA). So at least 12 years.</p>
<p>(Clinical) Psychologists can and often do have specialties- ie working with autistic children, people with eating disorders, etc. </p>
<p>(Psychologists typically do not make 200K a year; but 100K wouldn’t be surprising; also, psychologists do not prescribe drugs).</p>
<p>As for the topic at hand, I’m a Elec. Engineering major. The average starting salary is >60k. Depending on where I’m living, that could be considered well above decent, decent, or well below decent.</p>
<p>The average starting salary among electrical engineers is ~$55,000, not >$60,000.</p>
<p>I am hoping for about 28k for my first job, just enough to get me an apartment in a good area, make my loan payments, and have enough cushion to live modestly but comfortably. Spent most of the weekend figuring out expenses spreadsheets to figure how much I need to make and that’s about it, and conveniently coincides with all the job opportunities I am finding for now.</p>
<p>[Top</a> US Colleges ? Graduate Salary Statistics](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-us-colleges-graduate-salary-statistics.asp]Top”>http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-us-colleges-graduate-salary-statistics.asp)</p>
<p>100k mid-career is not unrealistic. It’s fairly average for a graduate from a good school.</p>
<p>zchryevns, I’m in a BS/MS program. I should have clarified.</p>
<p>Either way, every search I just did (in the last 2 seconds) says average EE is 59, so I was close enough.</p>
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I wouldn’t say it’s average. Bates, Pomona, Wake Forest, Hendrix, Tufts, Boston College, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Colby, Rutgers, Rhodes, Northwestern, UCLA, Miami, Johns Hopkins, Gettysburg, Emory, NYU, Colorado College, Reed, Mount Holyoke, etc. are all good schools with median mid-career salaries <$100,000 (although I’m splitting hairs with the first few).</p>
<p>That data only uses graduates who have no higher than a bachelor’s degree. If you average in everyone else who has JDs, MBAs, MDs, PhDs, … the numbers would be higher. The data isn’t close to perfect, but I think that it is interesting. 100k is highly attainable mid-career for a graduate from a good school.</p>
<p>I feel that I do not have an unrealistic expectation of my future earnings. This summer after completing my MS I will begin a job that pays 80k the first year.</p>
<p>I, too, meant to comment on MLDWoody’s comment.</p>
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<p>Actually, you mixed up therapist, psychotherapist, psychologist and psychiatrist.</p>