Maybe the IB kids are the ones who didn’t need financial aid…
^^thats what I was thinking
Note that the Ivy numbers are “IRS Earnings,” not compensation from an employer. Wealthy persons tend to get a good portion of their income from activities outside of compensation from an employer, often the majority. If you assume engineering majors get a similar portion of income as typical for their income percentile from activities outside of compensation, then I expect engineering would be higher.
More importantly, one needs to consider cause vs correlation. Did the Ivy grads’ financial success primarily relate to the school name or the person? If it’s the latter, a particular person who is capable of being accepted to HYPSM… is likely to have similar degree of success had they attended a different school instead. For example, the study at http://www.nber.org/papers/w7322.pdf found that students who attended a selective college had a similar income to students who were accepted to comparable selective colleges, but attended a less selective one.
@bclintonk, @furrydog, etc., note that the attrition rate for IB and MC tends to be pretty high. IB has a pretty set path. Analysts are there for 2-3 years. A small percentage are promoted to associates and the rest are sent off their merry way with recs for b-school. After b-school, many do well, but a good chunk are burnt out by IB and choose a less demanding industry.
Consulting isn’t as set, but they also have an up-or-out culture.
So some folks who start out in those industries really make it big, but the variance is high.
Interesting I have not seen many CCers wondering about investment banking. It was the rage 4-5 years ago.
BTW, @furrydog, I wish that someone did something with the Federal data that Payscale and WSJ did a few years ago (because tax income data would be more accurate):
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Salaries_for_Colleges_by_Type-sort.html
The interesting thing there is that the 75th percentile at Binghamton and UCD out-earn the median of the 2 schools with the highest median (Dartmouth and Princeton). Now how much harder is it to be 75th percentile at Bing or Davis compared to getting in to Princeton or Dartmouth?
When you look at it that way, it does seem like there are many paths to (financial) success.
@PurpleTitan - very interesting table. However, I am curious - where did WSJ get the numbers?
Are these self-reported numbers from Payscale - then I probably will take them with a grain of salt.
Also, mid-career = 10 years out of school?
(if so, it is an interesting choice of word)
I guess it is hard for the Fed to gather this data (from privacy standpoint).
Also, I suspect a lot of people would object to the use of this data due to the fact that it can/will be used to rank schools on just one crude metric which is salary.
Perhaps UCD’s numbers are skewed by the regional salary difference. We know a kid who graduated with a biology degree from UCD recently - it is hard to find employment - poor kid.
I agree with people’s take on IB - it seems like a very hard road to travel.
@furrydog, as I mentioned, that table is from Payscale, but if you look at the Fed numbers (which they did gather from tax returns; that’s how the WaPo reporter was able to put together his ranges), you’ll likely see something similar. However, you need to use their API to access that data (a bit annoyingly).
And yes, neither set of numbers correct for cost-of-living. Note that most Ivy grads (though maybe not the Ivy-equivalent grads in the Midwest) end up living on the high cost coasts as well.
I would expect that average pay is influenced also by where the graduates end up. When a school’s graduates are likely to end up in a place like NYC, the average income will be higher than if they end up in Rochester. But here is an odd thing. I’ve wondered about why Colgate’s average is so much higher than other schools, even those that seem very similar-like Hamilton in the next town over, or Skidmore. I figured that Colgate would have more econ/business majors, more male students, more students headed to NY for jobs…Then I started to look at the figures that comprise the overall average. For Colgate, the median starting salary for those majoring in Romance languages is listed at $93,000. Median starting salaries for biochem majors at $231,000 and for Rhetoric and English at $70,000. Those figure don’t seem credible to me.
@lostaccount, the Federal numbers have to be credible, unless people are lying on their tax returns. Could be a small sample size issue, though. The Payscale numbers could be exaggerated.
BTW, where are you getting the breakdown by major?
Maybe the Bopchem major is working for Daddy on Wall Street?
I recall that for a while back in the 1980s the most lucrative college major was Geography. This was due to two factors:
- There aren’t very many Geography majors.
- Michael Jordan was a Geography major.