I’ve been looking into it, and apparently from multiple sources, I’ve learned that a lot of high ranked and low ranked colleges have the same salary. Sometimes the ones with higher acceptance rates/lower admission standards even make more. For example, UNC seems to make an average of of 66k a year (I forget if it was mid-career or early) and NCSU makes an average of 71k. Why? I realize that the different programs may be what makes them different, but if the better schools really cost that much more, is it really worth it?
STEM oriented colleges, like NCSU. will certainly have higher starting salaries than colleges that graduate mostly humanities and social science majors. This is especially true for engineering and computer science graduates.
Yes, there is a link between college selectivity and income, even accounting for factors like parental income, SAT scores, and choice of major:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/22/study-finds-graduates-most-selective-colleges-enjoy-earnings-payoff
I suspect this is most true in business fields – where the idea of college “pedigree” is still important and grads from lesser-known schools face a steeper slope in terms of getting into top-paying companies.
Also, when you exclude engineering (which UNC largely does not have), starting salaries of UNC grads are significantly more than NC State grads.
Going versus not going at all and finishing a degree also matter. Not everyone can realistically go to a highly competitive college for many more reasons then simply being admitted.
Going to a highly respected college can help, but anyone with the same or more skills can surpass them in success. It also depends on the fields in the college. For example, MIT has high salaries than say an art school because the fields are higher paying in general. But the name does help.
It just depends. My college gets mentioned on CC all the time for its educational value and for getting students into PhD programs and med school. It’s a “gem”. The reality is that most graduates are not wealthy and the average salary for grads is pretty low. Its known for STEM but more for the life sciences not engineering or computer science. And those are not as highly paid degrees. It sounds terrible but I’ve discouraged my kids from that school for that reason. They offer little to no career counseling. I recently tried to connect their career center to a friend who runs an internship program for her successful tech company to create a little pipeline for current students. They flat out were not interested - it just seemed like it was too much work for them to build up relationships like that. It was ridiculous.
I would take salary data with a grain of salt. Remember, these salaries are self-reported and generally speaking, the more money a grad is making, the more likely it is that he/she is willing to share this info with their alma mater. In other words, the gal making $90K working for Boeing is a lot more likely to report her salary than the guy working part time at Starbucks for $8 an hour. Years ago, lower tier law schools got away with murder by reporting very high average starting salaries for their grads in glossy admission brochures. However, these numbers were based upon the small number of grads who actually reported their salaries and that didn’t include the 40% of the class that was basically unemployed.
Depending on the school you may have more learning opportunities due to more funding.