Hey! Curious to see which liberal arts colleges lead to the best careers, high paying, and the like.
I mean, in terms of just money, it’s pretty hard to beat Harvey Mudd, although it is not a super-traditional LAC.
“Best career” is very subjective. Do you mean lucrative? Fulfilling?
Lucrative and/or fulfilling. From what I’ve heard, it seems like the science oriented schools (Harvey Mudd) have the highest salary due to the engineering there. In terms of fulfillment, I’ve heard Carleton and Bowdoin. In terms of prep for professional schools, I’ve heard Amherst and Williams.
This year’s Payscale Report ranked Holy Cross 6th best for Return on investment. HC has a fantastic alumni network.
Payscale usually has Colgate and Bucknell high on their report.
The main factors that will affect a school’s financial ROI ranking:
a. The very few schools that are targeted by management consulting and Wall Street will have high financial ROI rankings. But a student needs to be interested in such jobs and careers for that to be useful.
b. The mix of majors at the schools will affect school wide averages. A school full of engineering majors will tend to do better than one full of biology majors, for example. Obviously, the student’s choice of major is more important for that student than the choice of majors of students overall – for example, a biology major in a school full of engineering majors may find that his/her job and career prospects are not as good as the school average.
I found this browsing: “Top 25 Liberal Arts Colleges With the Best Return on Investment 2014[li]”[/li]
The Top Ten
- Holy Cross
- Colgate
- Amherst
- Hamilton
- Washington & Lee
- Swarthmore
- Haverford
- Williams
- Claremont McKenna
- Harvey Mudd
Use discretion regarding the methodology.
*Most recent year available in this format.
Harvey Mudd is heavy with engineering and CS majors, and CMC is heavy with pre-professionally oriented economics majors and is apparently a recruiting target for high end finance jobs.
But that may not help you if your intended course of study or post-graduation goal is something else.
http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-type/bachelors/liberal-arts-schools
Seems like military schools do well in this for mid-career salaries. However, excluding those we get this:
- Harvey Mudd - $133,800
- Colgate - $126,600
- Washington & Lee - $124,300
- Carleton - $117,700
- Haverford - $115,000
- Williams - $110,700
- Swarthmore - $109,000
- Kenyon - $102,900
- Lafayette - $102,600
- Occidental - $101,900
Perhaps schools like Kenyon, Lafayette, and Occidental are very underrated due to many rankings not taking into consideration student outcomes.