<p>^If it doesn't relate to student quality, then how do you explain so many of the top 25 national universities and top 25 LACs on the top 50 list?</p>
<p>It wasn't 10 years out, but rather 15 1/2 years out.</p>
<p>Well, it's obvious that business students and engineering students will earn more than Gender Studies majors. The question is whether, controlling for major, students from top schools are earning more because of the name-brand of their school, or because they entered the school already being better. It's likely a combination of the two, but I'd bet inherent student quality is by far the dominant factor (and the study showing students who turned down Harvard earning just as much as those who attend would tend to confirm this).</p>
<p>^^Agree. There are a lot of factors, but student quality should be one of the top ones. Name-brand itself may not help, but a strong school network may.</p>
<p>What impressed me was that the study only considered alums who held a BA, not those who went on to get a grad degree. So these results show what a person with "just" a BA can do with it. I think this is a good real-world indicator of the value of the liberal arts education at these liberal arts colleges, and it's impressive. We all know that MDs, JDs, MBAs etc are going to go on to higher salaries, but to see how those with just that four year BA are being valued in the workplace years after graduation, well, that is informative of the alumni network,reputation of the college, its ablility to open doors and the work ethic of the individual alums. Not to mention the actual education imparted in those four years on campus.</p>
<p>I see this survey as having a more practical impact on those who are now in the process of selecting colleges to attend. The ivies are such a crapshoot in terms of admission, I think the small liberal arts colleges that showed up well on this list will get a big bump from this. Considering the cost of especially a private college education, it makes sense to look at the places where dd or ds can expect to earn well when they arrive in the real world! I am more thankful than ever that dd is on her way to College of the Holy Cross, which outshines Williams,Swarthmore,Colby, Boston College,Oberlin, and many, many others. We were initially impressed by the amazing Classics Department at Holy Cross, and friends told us of the strong alumni support network, but this latest data makes us really glad, too, that she will be a "Sader".</p>
<p>Interesting spin on this in the above posts. My first read on this was that as a group, LACs didn't show particularly well, with only a handful making it in toward the bottom of the top 50. But you're right: once you exclude HYPS (special case) and the engineering-heavy schools, a number of LACs did very well indeed. And once you consider that this was a study of graduates whose terminal degree was a bachelors---a distinct minority at the top LACs---their showing is even more impressive.</p>
<p>One point about the list in the article is that it not a "study" conducted in a scientific manner. The list was based on self-reported data given by alumni who registered with a particular website. Schools were only included if a certain number of alumni registered with the site. The information is not necessarily a statistically reliable sample of any school's total alumni group. It also did not consider any colleges where a certain number of alumni registered at the site, so it is not an accurate "ranking" of all, or even most, of the colleges in the U.S.. </p>
<p>For perspective, this "study" is similar to saying the self-reported statistics of students and parents posting here on College Confidential represent the national average of all high school students, or the individual averages of all students at any high school where a certain number of students post on College Confidential. </p>
<p>The article (and others about this "study" that have appeared in other publications) is an interesting datapoint, and perhaps nice assurances for future students and parents, but it proves absolutely nothing beyond "these people registered at this site, and these were the salaries they say they were earning."</p>
<p>(By the way, I frankly couldn't remember off the top of my what I earned 10 years ago with any accuracy. I wonder how many people can, except perhaps accountants and tax attorneys. :) )</p>
<p>By the way, since the website in question is a job searching site, one has to wonder: If these schools were the ones that had the most alumni registering at a job search site, just how successful are the alumni at those schools if they have more people looking for jobs than all the other colleges in the U.S.? And, how good a job do their career offices do at helping their alumni find jobs if so many of them are registering at a job search site?</p>
<p>Just playing devil's advocate, but sometimes it is important to look at how supposed "research" was accomplished, and its implications.</p>
<p>
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<p>Actually, there are a ton of outliers in both directions. Schools not in the top 25 US News research univeristies or top 25 US News LACs making the top 50 of mid-career income for terminal bachelor's degrees:</p>
<p>Polytechnic U of NY
Cooper Union
Worcester Polytechnic
RPI
Bucknell
Lafayette
Georgia Tech
Colorado School of Mines
Holy Cross
Stevens Institute of Technology
Lehigh
Occidental
Boston College
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
UC San Diego</p>
<p>Schools in US News top 25 research universities or top 25 LACs not making the list of top 50 mid-career income for terminal bachelors:</p>
<p>Northwestern
Emory
U of Michigan
Wellesley
Middlebury
Wesleyan
Grinnell
Vassar
Smith
Hamilton
Oberlin
Colby
Bates</p>
<p>No data: WUSTL, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, Haverford, Claremont McKenna, Bryn Mawr, Colorado College</p>
<p>By my rough count that's 35 "outliers": schools that aren't in either the top 25 rerseasch universities or top 25 LACs but nonetheless ARE in the top 50 income-producers; OR are in the top 25 research universities or top 25 LACs but are NOT in the top 50 income producers. In short, after CHYMPS and the "lesser Ivies," there's just about no correlation between a high ranking on the US News list and appearance on payscale.com's list of top income producers.</p>
<p>^ excellent points, thanks</p>
<p>The list is meaningless as PayScale does not adjust for cost of living. Would you rather make $80K in NYC or $60K in Houston?</p>
<p>$80K is like the avg. salary in NYC... whereas $60K in Houston is prolly above avg.</p>
<p>$80K in NYC is a good salary for an entry-level engineer. It entitles you to rent a small $2000 aparment in Manhattan which is not much better than a dump ... but I know a lot of kids would fight for a chance to work in NYC.</p>
<p>bcl,
Carnegie Mellon data is available and they rank in the top 20 of mid career earnings. Among top national universities, no data available on Duke, Wash U, and Johns Hopkins. </p>
<p>I think that the national universities follow a fairly predictable pattern with the salary data of only a few schools clearly underperforming their USNWR ranking (Northwestern, Emory, U Michigan). It looks to me like the results for the LAC are much more varied. Not sure how to interpret this.</p>
<p>hawkette,
4 of the 6 schools at Northwestern are communications, music, journalism, and education. These are schools full of future journalists, teachers, musicians, speech pathologists and actors/actresses...etc. Just because a teacher is not making 100K after 10 years or whatever doesn't mean he/she is "underperforming" and not a GREAT teacher!</p>
<p>Why do many people on this board have the tendency to overanalyze with so little?</p>
<p>Always a story....</p>
<p>No one is claiming that Northwestern (or Emory or U Michigan or any other school) is a bad place and that you're financially doomed by attending. The Payscale information is just one more data point that may have low value to some students and great value to others. And, frankly, the COLA-adjusted numbers for all three are probably much better than is appreciated.</p>
<p>Sorry, but I'm deeply skeptical of the data used for this study. I simply don't believe that, for example, Carleton graduates earn significantly higher salaries than Oberlin grads. I know dozens and dozens of Oberlin alums, and none of them found their current jobs through a job-search site, so they would not be represented in this survey. Carolyn is entirely right here: the methodology here doesn't add up to persuasive results.</p>
<p>I would guess Carleton grads DO make far more than Oberlin grads... You see far more Carleton grads in business at elite firms in NYC and Chicago.</p>
<p>School with strong alumni networks like Dartmouth, Notre Dame, Princeton, Holy Cross, Colgate have placed alums in higher earning careers for decades.</p>