Engineering and computer science are tough. And tuition at top engineering schools can cost a pretty penny. For those trying to pick a program with good return-on-investment, a recent survey of schools that produce the top-earning engineering/CS graduates could come in handy.
Computer science grads from Carnegie Mellon University make the highest reported starting salaries, averaging $89,832, according to the survey by the higher-education unit of San Francisco-based online personal finance service NerdWallet. Second and third on the list are grads of the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University’s College of Engineering, with average starting salaries of $83,750 and $74,467 respectively.
NerdWallet looked at the top 100 national universities plus the top 30 liberal arts schools from US News & World Report’s list of top colleges. It averaged starting salaries for the classes of 2011, 2012 and 2013 for each school.
As this article on Forbes points out, the survey is by no means comprehensive, since many schools, including Harvard and Yale, don’t release salary data. But it’s one of the only reports on best-paying engineering schools.
Engineers are, of course, consistently big earners (some might say overpaid) in salary reports, with no shortage of jobs. Engineering and computer science graduates fill all but one spot on the list of top 10 paid majors for the class of 2014 in the latest Salary Survey report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. This even though starting salaries for engineers rose only 0.3% between 2013 and 2014 as opposed to 3.7% for health science majors.
Bottom line: when it comes to earning well, you can’t go wrong by choosing engineering.
Prachi Patel is a freelance journalist based in Pittsburgh. She writes about energy, biotechnology, materials science, nanotechnology, and computing.
