<p>Here is an article about the median salaries from various undergraduate colleges/universities.</p>
<p>NU isn't anywhere near the top. You have to click on link within the article to see the whole list, and even then you have to scroll down quite a bit to find it. Oh, well. My one consolation is that the article admits there are a couple flaws with the data sample, but still...</p>
<p>Thoughts?</p>
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<li><p>“While the data are not from a randomized scientific sample”</p></li>
<li><p>“An important note: The data include only survey respondents whose highest academic degree is a bachelor’s. Therefore, doctors, lawyers and others in high-paying jobs that require advanced degrees are not included in the data set.” </p></li>
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<p>That means no MBA’s, either. </p>
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<li>"He also said that for many schools including alumni with advanced degrees would bring down their median salaries, because in PayScale’s sample advanced degree recipients are primarily teachers getting master’s degrees in order to teach. " </li>
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<p>Because as we NU students know, most of the people graduating from NU go on to teach :facepalm:.</p>
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<li><p>“Unfortunately, Mr. Lee says that year over year comparisons are difficult because the methodology changes from year to year. For example, the coding for career choices changes from year to year, depending on how survey respondents label themselves.”</p></li>
<li><p>“A note: PayScale declined to say how big the sample size was for each school, but said that for the bigger schools in many cases the responses numbered “in the hundreds.” For many smaller schools PayScale has not provided as much detailed statistical information because it said the sample size was too small.”</p></li>
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<p>I could get more scientific results by augury (that’s divining through goat entrails, just fyi).</p>
<p>Also remember that a huge number of NU grades have majors like journalism, music and theater that aren’t known for getting the big salaries out of college. So those might bring the average down.</p>
<p>^exactly. students and alums from schools of education, music, communications, and journalism would need to be excluded to get fair comparison. they account for 1/3 of the student body and the diluting effect is therefore significant. after all, duke has only arts & sciences and engineering schools and chicago has just arts and sciences.</p>
<p>Thanks for these responses, everyone. These are a lot of good points to keep in mind. :)</p>
<p>Not to mention that the large bulk of schools in the top 50 are pure engineering schools (not that there is anything wrong with that)/</p>
<p>Yes, I would not take this survey seriously considering that it tends to penalize larger schools that serve a variety of populations, including communications, education, and the human services.</p>
<p>absolutely worthless ranking</p>
<p>Those rankings reveal very little. If anything it shows which students are most honest, as that data is all self-reported.</p>
<p>When you look at self-reported salary data and compare it with actual data released by companies giving salary ranges, guess which are usually significantly higher?</p>
<p>^or it shows which students like to brag. </p>
<p>Given that the average salaries of even business grads from Ross are in the 55-60K range, you start to wonder how those liberal arts schools have similar averages. :rolleyes:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bus.umich.edu/pdf/EmploymentProfile2008.pdf[/url]”>http://www.bus.umich.edu/pdf/EmploymentProfile2008.pdf</a></p>
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<li> NU has lots of liberal artsy things that don’t pay as well.</li>
<li> Doesn’t include the Graduate degree students. This is critical, because a good number of Engineers take the BS/MS route, where they graduate with a Master’s in 5 years. This removes a fair chunk of the Engineers and other Quantitative Majors from the pool of eligible candidates.</li>
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