My kid just received a first job offer, in TN. Starting ‘salary’ for this science related job is $25/hr or equiv. to about $50k/yr. I am not sure if this is a good starting salary or not. Friends kids who graduated last year, all started jobs, in big cities, with $100k+ right out of the gate.
What are your thoughts and experiences with new grad. starting salaries?
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It depends heavily on the industry, location, and firm size. Compensation packages also vary in structure: just salary, salary plus cash bonus, salary plus stock options, all 3 components, etc.
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Best of luck to all. 
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Seems typical or good for BA/BS jobs in most sciences.
$100k+ is likely to be those graduating in computer science, elite business to finance and consulting and the like, or math / statistics to high end finance, etc.
You can try College Scorecard to see recent graduate pay levels by major at each college, if there were enough graduates who got federal financial aid (more likely at bigger colleges and departments).
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Tn is a big state. COL is different in Nashville than Chattanooga or Jackson.
And salaries will be dependent on industry and maybe major.
Also if your student has graduated and now needs a job vs securing one months ago, companies may lowball. He needs them more than they need him.
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It seems like a good start, especially in a year when some offers are getting rescinded or companies are offering 6 month delayed starts. Congratulations to your kid !
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My kid received an offer of $24 an hour and it was a science based job. However, it was 3rd shift contract job for 6 months and he turned it down.
Not all science related jobs pay six figures. Lab technicians get paid about $24 per hour. You might want to provide more information to get more targeted responses
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My S worked as a chemical analyst, and his entry level pay as a lab tech (2018) was $16/hour. He eventually switched jobs and was earning $32/hour or so with lots of OT at time and a half when he left at the end of 2022. He found that, for his interests, there wasn’t much upward mobility in his field. He left the field to take a job that used the experience he had gained, but it has much more available in terms of upward mobility. He doesn’t have regrets about doing what he did, though, because he wouldn’t have had his current job without that experience.
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For example, here is College Scorecard’s listing of recent BA/BS graduate median pay levels by major at Arizona State University, for a selection of science majors and some other common majors.
| Major | Median Pay |
|---|---|
| Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology | $48,808 |
| Biology, General | $46,169 |
| Chemistry | $49,784 |
| Physics | $61,950 |
| Applied Mathematics | $58,263 |
| Mathematics | $64,265 |
| Computer Science | $99,911 |
| Computer Engineering | $101,600 |
| Mechanical Engineering | $87,715 |
| Business Administration, Management and Operations | $70,685 |
| Finance and Financial Management Services | $75,397 |
| Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods | $104,448 |
| Marketing | $68,619 |
| English Language and Literature, General | $43,261 |
| Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies | $63,308 |
| Psychology, General | $45,403 |
| Economics | $65,899 |
| Political Science and Government | $56,373 |
| Sociology | $45,928 |
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Are there benefits, 401(k) match, paid time off, some other perks like paid bus pass, gym membership fee reimbursement, etc?
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Good question Re benefits- if job comes with any it sounds like a decent offer.
My new grad and her friends are all business and engineering majors- lots in consulting, IB, etc so yes, starting salaries are high and with good benefits. But, a few friends had start dates pushed back, as mentioned above, to January.
The good news: I’m hearing most grads that we know do have a job offer🤞
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Most importantly your child got that sometimes elusive first job out of college! Congrats!
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$50,000/year sounds like a reasonable starting salary to me also.
The specific type of STEM degree will make a big difference. So will the location.
For example, jobs in Boston (or across the river in Cambridge) are likely to pay a bit better than a comparable job in Tennessee. A job in Silicon Valley might pay a bit better still. However, the cost of living is higher in Boston compared to Tennessee, and highly still in Silicon Valley.
I have heard of new graduates with starting salaries of $100,000 or so. However, this was both in high demand specialties (such as software engineers coming out of Georgia Tech or MIT or Stanford) and in high cost of living areas (eg, the Georgia Tech graduate that I recently talked to had taken a job in Massachusetts, and had previously done an internship at the same company).
And getting a good first job, even if the pay is so so, can help get a person started. Second jobs are often easier to find, particularly if the recent graduate did well on the first job and made some good contacts and got some good experience.
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We are waiting for the formal offer, but they are offering at least relocation expenses, and I hope healthcare.
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Very, very true, and in a way, the job came to him rather than he sought the job!
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Sounds like he is "launched’ into adulthood! Congrats to all!
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Yes, biology is the largest science major, but also relatively low in pay at the BA/BS level.
Median pay of recent graduates in biology from College Scorecard:
| College | Median pay of biology graduates | Major, if not Biology, General |
|---|---|---|
| Arizona State University | $46,169 | |
| University of Chicago | $52,065 | |
| Cornell University | $49,786 | |
| Duke University | $62,963 | |
| East Carolina University | $47,217 | |
| Emory University | $48,491 | |
| Florida International University | $40,108 | |
| Harvard University | $54,389 | Ecology, Evolution, Systematics, and Population Biology |
| Johns Hopkins University | $46,330 | Cell/Cellular Biology and Anatomical Sciences |
| Johns Hopkins University | $43,609 | Neurobiology and Neurosciences |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | $72,992 | |
| University of Michigan - Ann Arbor | $47,288 | |
| Mississippi State University | $52,302 | |
| University of North Carolina | $41,546 | |
| University of Tennessee - Knoxville | $44,486 | |
| Vanderbilt University | $78,554 |
In general, there does not appear to be much college prestige variation for biology graduates like there may be in some other majors, although Vanderbilt, MIT, and maybe Duke seem to be outliers here (though none comes close to $100k).
So if the student being referred to is graduating in biology, the stated pay level seems to be typical for graduates in the major.
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Congrats to your son. No reason to compare with the “Joneses”. He has a job and I am sure pretty happy about it. He must of done the research to know if the pay is fair. Nothing replaces experience, nothing. Good for him.
But my question is besides location/field working in,how does one go about figuring out their “package”.
I hear some people say they make over 100k but that is their base pay, stock options, benefit like Healthcare, relocation fee etc etc then others it’s just their base pay and the other stuff is just their benefit package.
So what is the right way to calculate this when saying “I make this much”?.. Thx
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Often you don’t need to say this to anybody. So you don’t need to bother about the semantics :-).
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