Colleges That Bring in the Highest Paychecks

Location, prestige, academic reputation, and tuition are major factors for students in the college selection process, but post-graduation salary is rarely taken into consideration.

Although salaries depend heavily on a graduate’s field of work, companies are willing to pay a premium for students hailing from the country’s top universities. But which undergraduate institutions offer the most valuable degrees?

Recently, Payscale.com released a report on the highest salary potential among 1,058 of the nation’s colleges. Based on this data, colleges and universities can be ranked by the mid-career median salaries of its graduates.

For schools with the same mid-career median salaries, starting median salary determines their relative rank. In the case of a tie in this number, the school with the higher starting salary is ranked higher.

The ranking considered only people with undergraduate degrees, which ruled out post-graduate degree holders, such as lawyers and medical and pharmacy professionals.

Of the following top 10 highest earning schools, their graduates earn an average of $122,500 at mid-career, which is up nearly 5 percent over last year.

As a few points of comparison, the bottom 10 schools’ graduates earn an average of $44,490 at mid-career, and the top party school by salary potential is University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with a mid-career salary of $95,900.

So, which schools have highest-paid graduates?

Stanford University