It is reported that the average mid-career salary is around $77,000 which seems incredibly low for a school that is of its academic caliber. I understand that factors like cost of living can have a great effect on this but the Northeast has a relatively high cost of living so the salaries should be higher too.
What are their dominant majors?
Schools that don’t have engineering often have lower avgs
I wouldn’t rely on Payscale from this point on. It’s based largely on self-reporting, but, for a long time was all a lot of us here on CC had to compare salaries between colleges. Now, the Obama administration has rolled out a government website that, among other things, culls actual tax returns from thousands of applicants for student loans, ten years after graduation, a much more reliable data bank, IMO.
Trinity’s median salary range compares favorably with other NESCACs:
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?130590-Trinity-College
^ That’s the first I’ve seen that the scorecard data is based on tax info. Thank you for pointing that out.
Self-reporting of Payscale is less of big a deal than self reporting built into USNews rank. Sample size for Payscale can limit accuracy, especially for LACs. Payscale does a statistical check on sample sizes, and claims an accuracy of plus or minus 10%. Some LACs do not get listed in some years because of insufficient data.
If you are going to use Payscale, then you need to take note of the last column, which indicates the % of grads that are STEM. This gives you an idea of the number of high paying majors in the sample. Trinity is on the low side (even for LACs) at 9%. This is not perfect because some STEM majors (Bio) have low salaries and some non-STEM (Econ and Business) have high salaries. You should also sort the Payscale data by state to get an idea of geographical effects and by major to get the effects of major.
The latest Payscale has Trinity at $86,500 for mid career.
http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-type/bachelors/liberal-arts-schools?page=8
If you are going to use the Scorecard info, there can also be sampling effects. The government database only includes those receiving government aid. You need to look at the financial aid section to see how many students receive aid. Only 12% of the Trinity students have student loans, which is a small sample size. (Harvard is tiny at 3%, Tufts is 30%, Williams is 25%, Amherst is 13%)
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?130590-Trinity-College
Scorecard data is more heavily biased by major and Wall Street vs. Peace Corps effects than Payscale Mid-Career because it is sampled so close to graduation.
Trinity has a small General Engineering Program (Tufts is the only other NESCAC with Engineering) and a large Econ Program (pretty much all NESCACs). You can use College Navigator to get the detailed mix of majors.
There is no perfect salary database, but if you use them with care, you can get useful info.
Adding Mid-Career Data to the Scorecard would be nice, because some LA programs tend to produce students that gain more salary ground over time than others and some engineering/business programs tend to produce students that gain more salary ground over time than others.
The Scorecard data is 10 years from enrollment in college, not 10 years from graduation.
That’s a good point. I guess I would argue that families who don’t need to take out loans are more likely to fall into two categories: the very rich and the very poor. The scorecard data are more representative of the typical middle-class college applicant.