Undergrad CS - Starting Salaries. Why the huge difference between colleges?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>Here are some of the average starting salaries I could find on the Internet for CS majors. </p>

<p>MIT - ~$90,000
Stanford - $93,850
Cornell - $91,641
CMU - $90,120
UCLA - $88,384 (CS)
Berkeley - $83,139
UMich - $77,500
GTech - $71,250
UT Austin - 70,000
UIUC - 68,650
UCLA - $66,871 (CSE)
Purdue - 59,090
Drexel - $58,584</p>

<p>It's interesting to see the pattern here. MIT, Stanford, Cornell, CMU and UCLA make about 90k. I couldn't find the data for Caltech but I have a feeling even they will be around this much.</p>

<p>Next come Berkeley and UMich with about a 10k drop from the above. At about 80k.</p>

<p>Then after more than a 10k drop are GT, UT, UIUC and UCLA (CSE). At about 65k - 70k</p>

<p>And at the bottom are Purdue and Drexel - About 60K</p>

<p>Now, most of these schools are in the top 15 when it comes to CS. I am wondering how come there is a difference of 30k between them. </p>

<p>They all are ABET accredited programs (I think), and I assume that someone at MIT will learn the same stuff as someone at Purdue. I do know that MIT is far tougher to get in, so the students will generally be smarter.</p>

<p>Here's my question: Do MIT grads earn more (a LOT more) because they are smarter, or because they are students of MIT? What will happen if I take the resume of an MIT graduate, with all his national awards, projects and everything else, and just change the College name from MIT to Purdue. Keeping everything else the same, will he still be worth 90k?</p>

<p>Also, I was honestly quite surprised to see Cornell and UCLA making it to the 90k club. I was sure that Berkeley, and even UMich were better than both for CS. Any explanation? You think Berkeley's large EECS enrollment might have something to do with this?</p>

<p>*Note that some universities don't have a separate CS. So for them, the data is for the closest major I could find (CSE, EECS).</p>

2

<p>There are probably a few factors at play here.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Cost of living. The highest-paying schools might send their graduates to pricier parts of the country. Think New England and West Coast.</p></li>
<li><p>Prestige and finance. Big-name institutions might send more graduates into jobs in finance where people make a lot more money than they would in engineering roles.</p></li>
<li><p>Starting salary difference between CS and EE. CS graduates may make significantly more than EE graduates, on average. This would drag down the stats for combined programs.</p></li>
<li><p>Large starting salary ranges based on graduate quality. CS graduates get salaries that span a much wider range than that of graduates from many other technical majors. Schools that attract better students will have better stats, not necessarily because they are better schools, but because the students would have made more money anyway.</p></li>
</ol>

3

<p>Are you saying a Drexel graduate should earn as much as MIT graduate ? LOL</p>

4

<p>In addition to being more likely to go into finance jobs, the graduates from the name schools may be more likely to go into R&D and engineering jobs, whereas the other graduates may be more likely to go into lower-paying support and system administration jobs. That’s just conjecture though; you’d have to find a breakdown of the types of jobs the graduates take. Keep in mind that these are just averages; the top graduates from the schools lower on the list will be getting significantly higher salaries than the average.</p>

<p>I’m not sure that having a combined program makes much difference since MIT’s is a combined EECS.</p>

5

<p>Probably that at better schools, the average student is more intelligent and hard working.</p>

<p>Also, CS by itself at Berkeley is $95,000: <a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

6

<p>Again…</p>

<p>These are very subjective stats from wherever you got them. Also, these would be for the VERY FIRST job and employer.</p>

<p>These stats have very little bearing on an entire career…especially in CS. Your CS career depends heavily on your expertise, experience and demand of your current skillset. The UT Austin grad can learn the “latest thing on the street” and hop to another employer and make up that gap pretty quickly.</p>

<p>…or the Drexel grad may get a TS/SCI+Ploy clearance to do contract work for one of the federal agencies in DC</p>

<p>…or the UCLA may 8 years later decide to be an independent (1099, LLC) contractor and charge a ton per hour for a certain skillset.</p>

<p>Employer-hopping is more accepted in software than most other industries.</p>

7

<p>There’s not enough information to answer your question. It would be better to come at the issue from the other side, i.e., the employer. If there’s one that pays 90K+ then the question is whether they pay a 30k premium for a student from MIT/Stanford versus Purdue/Drexel. Or, is there an entire class of employers that pay 90k+ to students from MIT - to - CMU but will not even consider a hire from Michigan - to - Drexel? </p>

<p>BTW - if you can delete your duplicate thread please do so.</p>