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

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<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>And does the mid-career pay even out, or is the gap still there?</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>

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<p>Bump!!</p>

<p>10char</p>

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<p>You waited 1hr 13minutes for a bump??? </p>

<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>

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<p>Wall Street recruiting.</p>

<p>Regional differences.</p>

<p>Note that CMU, Stanford, and Berkeley L&S CS are not ABET accredited for CS.</p>

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<p>Regional differences is a huge one, and often not understood by most people. </p>

<p>To put it simply, an engineer making ~$90k in LA, or the bay area/silicon valley (think UCLA or Stanford grads) is making roughly the same amount of money, factoring in the cost of living, as someone making $51k in say, Dayton OH.</p>

<p>In other words, these salaries are MEANINGLESS without knowing the cost of living differences!</p>

<p><a href=“http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/[/url]”>http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>How do employers view L&S computer science classes?</p>

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<p>Maybe cost of living where the grads are hired?</p>

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</p>

<p>If you mean for Berkeley, L&S CS majors choose from the same CS courses as EECS majors do.</p>

<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>B.S. CSE == B.S. CS
A BA CS is a little different. The thing with CS is that there is very little consistency on which school they put it, but usually it will be in the engineering school</p>

<p>EECS will vary almost from full CS to full EE, it gives the student a lot flexibility. Maybe the location at some of this universities don’t have a good market for CS? or maybe like others have pointed out some CS choose to go to the finance industry</p>

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<p>If you look at UC Berkeley’s L&S CS employment survey… The average starting salary reported is 95K, but only 50 out of 114 responded. In the EECS program, 155 responded out of 308, with an average of 83K.</p>

<p>I can’t explain the difference between L&S and EECS at UCB. </p>

<p>I only looked up the numbers for MIT and there were 54 respondents to their survey. I couldn’t find the actual number of graduates. However, my theory is that UCB and Michigan graduate a lot more than MIT, Stanford, etc. and their “lower end” students are more “capable” than UCB’s and Michigan’s.</p>

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<p>Nonsense. Your logic completely ignores the cost of living differences! They can vary dramatically from one place to another. </p>

<p>The differences in salaries are almost entirely a function of cost of living. End of story. Think about it, you can’t pay an engineer $60k if he/she lives in San Francisco, silicon valley, or LA (they’d be living in the ghetto)… conversely, you can’t pay an engineer $95k living in Oklahoma. The differences in disposable income (after living costs) would be massive in both cases.</p>

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<p>The Purdue number I’ve seen from Purdue itself was in the low-mid $80k’s…</p>

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<p>turbo93 - Can you give us the link?
Here’s the one I saw,
<a href=“Purdue CCO”>https://www.cco.purdue.edu/Common/SalaryMay10.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Check Computer Science average. It’s for the year 2010-2011 though. The highest salary was 85,000 which is still less than the average salary for the 90k club. And yet, people say that the name of the college doesn’t matter as long as you perform well. Although you guys might me be right about the difference because of cost of living.</p>

<p>My other question is, do you feel the salaries will even out mid career or will the 30k difference stay forever, or even increase?</p>

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<p>The salary difference definitely will not stay at $30,000 forever. As an engineer gains experience, skills, his worth increases. Where the engineer went to for his BA won’t matter as much as it did just entering the field.</p>

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<p>I stand corrected, that’s the document I saw. It is around $60k :(. I reported the high instead of the average, grrr. Thanks for the correction!</p>

<p>Now, in terms of money. I don’t work for money, and money should never be your primary objective. For one, the cost of living difference will kill any and all big money dreams one may have. $60k in Fly-Over country is a lot better than $80k in SanFran, especially considering that the Fly-Over country job will likely be 40-45 hrs a week while the SanFran job will be a lot more than that.</p>

<p>Do not get fixated on starting salaries - instead look for experience. In 1985 I started working for a company that was ‘low tech’ at the time while my friends got jobs at Intel, General Dynamics, and the like. Only took us a year or two to realize what the career paths involved:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>I started working in R&D, working on key parts of a visual compiler & code generator only 20 years or so ahead of its time, among some pretty serious geniuses</p></li>
<li><p>my classmates at Intel, meanwhile, were busy being sysadmins, testers, and other less than glamorous positions</p></li>
<li><p>my friends at General Dynamics did high tech tasks like flight-qualify Duracell batteries used somehow in a defense project (memo to Bob: it’s a battery)</p></li>
</ul>

<p>Fast forward 28 years and I’m now learning Hadoop, Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Semantic Web stuff while they’re busy counting days to retirement in Florida. I’m looking forward to another decade at least of writing code (unless Java finally gives me the coronary I so deserve)</p>

<p>Do not take the part about learning lightly. If you aren’t adding to your resume or LinkedIn substantially every year or two, you’re at the wrong job. Over the last 28 years, all in the same company, 15 with the same manager (likely to finally change next week) I have worked on nearly every sexy acronym that has ever been created, applied for a bunch of patents, received a few, and overall have had a heck of a career. Money is the least of my concerns…</p>

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<p>Another factor besides COL is that Wall Street firms regularly hire top STEM grads to do “analyst” work for them. Those are not engineering jobs and they pay really really well.</p>

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<p>^ Valid point, however, a wall street analyst position is in a different industry altogether, and the cost-of-living still plays a large role in those salaries. Remember, you’d be living in NYC… not exactly a cheap place! </p>

<p>To put it in real terms, a 3 bedroom apartment in manhattan will set you back about $4,600-6,500 a month, depending on location, and not including utilities. On the other hand, a 3 bedroom apartment in a nice area where I live goes for around $550-1,100 a month. BIG difference!</p>

<p>In fact, a salary of $135k in NYC is equivalent to a salary of $55k in “flyover country”. That’s something that just can’t be ignored.</p>

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<p>turbo93 - I totally agree with you that salary should not be the most important factor. But here I am using avg salary as a data set to measure a college’s worth.</p>

<p>Okay, So the cost of living is a big factor.</p>

<p>Also, is it true that EE engineers on an average, earn lesser than CS majors? Because then I might have gotten the answer for my question on Berkeley. The data I reported is for Berkeley EECS. ~$83,000. This might be lower because it’s an average of EE and CS majors. Here’s the salary for CS majors. (L&S CS) <a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm&lt;/a&gt;. It’s close to $95,000. I am guessing even EECS CS majors must be earning closer to this.</p>

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<p>Regarding EE versus CS, you can look in the career surveys of schools which do not have the two combined to see if there is any pattern in pay levels.</p>

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<p>EE’s who write some software are golden because after a few years they can write software AND do hardware… Pure CS people like me can’t do hardware… Now, would Bank of America care about BSEE vs BSCS? probably not. So the pay would be about the same. Would Intel? probably. </p>

<p>My company employs tons of EE’s writing software - I’d say most of our coders are EE’s/CSE’s (we do embedded communications and entertainment stuff). And overall, in my opinion, EE is considerably harder than CS, esp. the math based EE classes in Jr. and Sr. year versus the catchy name, big project, but oh-so-easy-to-code Jr. and Sr. CS courses. I would not say the EE’s are paid more (the coders). The pure hardware EE’s that stick around for ever, maybe get less. </p>

<p>Then there are some Dark Arts areas of EE’s that pay very well (RF, Analog, etc)… I have a friend who designs analog IC’s for wall warts (yea, power chargers) and he’s been making six figures since the mid 90’s… Our Antenna design group gets paid in unicorn horns… they’re that valuable.</p>