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Average salaries of Ivy League grads

kranky

kranky

Elite Member
In a recent thread someone sneered that we were paying an engineer "only" $55K as a new graduate. SmartMoney magazine studied "payback" rates of various schools by factoring in graduates' salaries after 2 years and again after 15 years, and I thought the new graduates' salaries were interesting.

So here are the average salaries of Ivy League grads 2 years after graduation, as reported in SmartMoney magazine.

U Penn $59,600
Princeton $58,900
Cornell $57,500
Harvard $57,300
Columbia $54,300
Dartmouth $54,100
Yale $52,600
Brown $49,400
 
I recently graduated from a top 10 school (as ranked by US News), and I know that those are low. The standard salary offer for almost every job was $70,000 (before bonuses). Anything lower was pretty much scoffed at. As long as you graduated in the top half of your class, even with a liberal arts degree, you could find one of these jobs. However, some people purposely picked lower-paying industries, e.g. teaching or research assistant jobs, which is probably why the averages are lower.

On the other hand, pretty much every competent computer science major that I knew had offers of $80,000+. So to make your comparison fair, you would have to be looking at the average engineering salaries, which are significantly higher than those figures listed above.

You would hardly feel the recession at these institutions.
 
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set to pull 140K this year 😱


i dont even use my degree.. small biz owner/day job that required a degree.. just a, degree..
 
I graduated from one of the top schools in Canada, and I can't find a job in my field. I wish I was making "only" $55,000/yr, instead of under $30k. 🙁
 
Bignate603 said:
What's the number of years in school before you've graduated and can work in your industry (including any residency or internships)? Unless you're comparing a 4 year degree you can't really draw any correlations.
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I have no idea I'm not an MD.
 
At the business school at my university, median salaries at graduation were $55,000 in 2008. Might have lowered since then, but something in the high-forties for someone in their early 20s isn't anything to scoff at.

Not sure about the university as a whole, though.

I would be happy with $40,000/year though. Though that might require me to live with my parents for the near future.
 
XX55XX said:
At the business school at my university, median salaries at graduation were $55,000 in 2008. Might have lowered since then, but something in the high-forties for someone in their early 20s isn't anything to scoff at.

Not sure about the university as a whole, though.

I would be happy with $40,000/year though. Though that might require me to live with my parents for the near future.
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You can easily move out on your own on $40k a year.
 
LOL...I love these threads. So much e-peen going on. It's the average people. I mean, all you very smart engineering grads out there....you know....the law of averages? So stop being hurt by these statistics and acting like you got something taken away because the average numbers do not point towards you.
 
HamburgerBoy said:
What is the average salary of an MIT graduate in engineering?
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I have worked with a few during coops. None of them had anything below a masters and they were pretty high up there in terms of position or they were enjoying the benefits of being a highly paid contractor. I'd imagine at least 70K is the norm for an MIT grad with a B.S. if you can find one with just a B.S. Lots of MIT grads end up working for Lincoln Lab.
 
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