Starting salaries for business majors are soaring in industries such as investment banking and consulting.
Top 15 Colleges With The Highest-Paid Graduates
Have you ever wondered if the top-ranked colleges in the country are the ones that set you up for the highest salaries? Might seem like this would be correlated, but that’s not the case for every ranking.
A prospective student typically commits four years of their life and a small fortune into their degree. It’s only natural to wonder what kind of return that investment will actually yield once entering the workforce.
A new analysis from Visual Capitalist, written by Sofie Gilbert, explored this topic by reordering the top 15 schools in Forbes’ 2027 America’s Top Colleges ranking according to the median salaries of alumni with 10 years of work experience.
“Ultimately, the two rankings answer different questions: which colleges perform best across a broad range of outcomes, and which have the highest-earning alumni a decade into their careers,” says Gilbert.
VISUAL CAPITALIST’S TOP 15 COLLEGES
| School | Forbes Overall College Rank (2027) | Median Alumni Salary |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 1 | $131,182 |
| Princeton University | 2 | $121,773 |
| Harvard University | 3 | $119,708 |
| Columbia University | 4 | $117,010 |
| University of Pennsylvania | 5 | $151,328 |
| Stanford University | 6 | $126,916 |
| California Institute of Technology | 7 | $117,278 |
| Yale University | 8 | $117,464 |
| University of California, Berkeley | 9 | $111,530 |
| Vanderbilt University | 10 | $115,467 |
| Johns Hopkins University | 11 | $111,678 |
| University of California, Los Angeles | 12 | $110,519 |
| Duke University | 13 | $119,558 |
| Cornell University | 14 | $119,804 |
| Northwestern University | 15 | $113,972 |
Editor’s Note: Median annual salary is in U.S. dollars and reflects 10 years of experience.
The biggest surprise was that of Forbes’ top three overall schools, MIT, Princeton and Harvard, only one was in the top three earners – and that was MIT.
When it comes to salary, the school at the very top of the list was actually the University of Pennsylvania, leading with a median alumni salary of $151,328. MIT followed in the No. 2 spot with a median salary of $131,182, then Stanford came in third at $126,916.
With Forbes, Penn ranked fifth overall, while Princeton was in fourth, then Harvard in sixth. Penn’s median salary is more than $20,000 higher than MIT’s, which shows just how differently colleges can stack up depending on what’s being measured.
As one can expect, Forbes’ rankings evaluate much more than median paychecks. In their rankings, alumni salary accounts for 20% of a school’s score, using earnings measured three, six, ten and twenty years after graduation. The other 80% is given to six other factors: student debt, graduation rates, alumni leadership and achievement, return on investment, retention rates and academic success.
Penn’s impressive showing likely ties back to its pipeline of lucrative finance careers through the Wharton School. Research from the Burning Glass Institute shows that Penn finance grads pull in an average annual wage premium of around $61,000 over their first decade on the job compared to the typical finance graduate.
With the focus shifting strictly to earnings, a few schools make some noticeable moves. Cornell University, for instance jumps all the way from No. 14 overall up to No. 5 for median alumni salary, sitting at $119,804. Duke University also made a large leap, climbing from No. 13 overall to No. 7 in comparison, with a median salary of $119,558. On the flip side, Columbia University went in the opposite direction, dropping from fourth overall down to 11th. UC Berkeley also slid down from 9th to 14th with a median alumni salary of $111,530.
When it comes down to which side of the chart a student should consider, it really depends person to person. As Jen FitzPatrick, associate director of college counseling at Columbus Academy in Ohio, says in a Forbes piece, choosing a college starts with understanding what matters most to you. That could be cost, prestige or name recognition, or maybe other factors like the proximity to home. She says one should ask themself, “What are the top three factors that you and your family will be considering during the college search process?”
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