Payscale's Colleges Worth the Investment

Investor's Business Daily highlighted Payscale's "Colleges With Top Investment Return" in their August 6, 2010 issue at  http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/542942/201008061829/Colleges-With-Top-Investment-Return-.aspx  (requires sign-in) MIT leads the lifetime earnings, but Harvey Mudd College (which it turns out these days is nearly as hard to get into) leads median midcareer pay.








"Check PayScale's list of cumulative dollars earned in 30 years of work. Leading the way is MIT with $1.7 million (or 56,000 per year, but not clear if that's 1980 dollars or now)  Close behind is Caltech with $1.6 million in total earnings"
"... midcareer median pay leaders. Harvey Mudd College — with median midcareer pay of $126,000 — edges out Princeton, Harvard and Dartmouth. The Claremont, Calif., school also tops Caltech, MIT and Stanford."

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PayScale.com is one place that automates the process for you. The site collects college-cost and post-college pay data. It calculates return on investment for people who get just an undergraduate degree at 555 colleges.

.... You'll also see names that are obscure to most people outside the home turf, such as the Colorado School of Mines.
Each Ivy-topper's annual return on investment beats 13%.
Harvard, 20th on the list, has an ROI of 12.5%.
Low costs can be key. ROI at the University of Florida, for one, is 13% for in-state residents.
Once they graduate, Gators with just a bachelor's degree can expect to earn $696,700 within 30 years, which averages out to $23,223 a year.
That pales next to Harvard grads' $1.6 million, or $50,000 a year.
But as a state school, a Florida undergraduate degree typically costs $70,150. A Harvard sheepskin runs nearly $190,000...
Other quantitative-oriented degrees — applied math, physics, economics — round out the top 10.
To be sure, compared with graduates of less-prestigious colleges, grads of the best-known research universities tend to earn more early in their careers and by midcareer. The differences can be big.
"But the pay gaps between top- and lowest-earning majors are generally even bigger," Lee said. "So what you major in makes more difference than where you go."

And here's the payscale web page for the top 100, see
http://www.payscale.com/education/average-cost-for-college-ROI for the complete list.









Among some of the colleges we were looking at:
1 MIT
2 CalTech
3 Harvard
4 Harvey Mudd
6 Stanford
15 Worcester Polytechnic
30 Stevens Institute
33 Santa Clara University
47 UCLA
48 USC
53 Vanderbilt University

Top 100


Colleges Worth Your Investment - Full List

Rank	School Name	School Type	Average Cost for College in 2009	30 Year ROI (2010 Dollars)	Annual ROI
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1	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	Private	$189,300	$1,688,000	12.6%
2	California Institute of Technology (CalTech)	Private	$181,100	$1,644,000	12.6%
3	Harvard University	Private	$189,600	$1,631,000	12.5%
4	Harvey Mudd College	Private	$187,700	$1,627,000	12.5%
5	Dartmouth College	Private	$188,400	$1,587,000	12.4%
6	Stanford University	Private	$191,800	$1,565,000	12.3%
7	Princeton University	Private	$187,700	$1,517,000	12.3%
8	Yale University	Private	$194,200	$1,392,000	11.9%
9	University of Notre Dame	Private	$181,900	$1,384,000	12.1%
10	University of Pennsylvania	Private	$191,300	$1,361,000	11.8%
11	Duke University	Private	$187,600	$1,319,000	11.8%
12	Lehigh University	Private	$180,400	$1,308,000	11.9%
13	Union College, New York	Private	$186,500	$1,262,000	11.7%
14	Amherst College	Private	$188,200	$1,259,000	11.6%
15	Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)	Private	$184,900	$1,224,000	11.6%
16	University of California, Berkeley	Public (In-State)	$118,900	$1,223,000	13.1%
17	Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)	Private	$190,600	$1,220,000	11.5%
18	Colgate University	Private	$187,700	$1,167,000	11.4%
19	Columbia University	Private	$192,200	$1,161,000	11.3%
20	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)	Private	$227,300	$1,158,000	10.8%
21	Georgetown University	Private	$199,800	$1,147,000	11.2%
22	Bowdoin College	Private	$188,500	$1,146,000	11.3%
23	University of California, Berkeley	Public (Out-of-State)	$212,200	$1,139,000	10.9%
24	Brown University	Private	$189,800	$1,138,000	11.3%
25	Villanova University	Private	$183,700	$1,137,000	11.4%
26	Rice University	Private	$159,400	$1,132,000	11.8%
27	Colorado School of Mines	Public (In-State)	$95,740	$1,132,000	13.6%
28	Cornell University	Private	$188,200	$1,132,000	11.3%
29	Lafayette College	Private	$179,500	$1,129,000	11.4%
30	Stevens Institute of Technology	Private	$222,600	$1,111,000	10.7%
31	Georgia Institute of Technology	Public (In-State)	$79,140	$1,111,000	14.2%
32	Colorado School of Mines	Public (Out-of-State)	$160,700	$1,088,000	11.7%
33	Santa Clara University	Private	$187,500	$1,072,000	11.1%
34	College of the Holy Cross	Private	$182,600	$1,069,000	11.2%
35	University of Chicago	Private	$195,800	$1,055,000	11%
36	Georgia Institute of Technology	Public (Out-of-State)	$157,600	$1,050,000	11.6%
37	Manhattan College	Private	$137,100	$1,038,000	12%
38	University of Virginia (UVA)	Public (In-State)	$74,410	$1,038,000	14.1%
39	Williams College	Private	$183,200	$1,017,000	11%
40	Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT)	Private	$166,700	$1,016,000	11.3%
41	Tufts University	Private	$191,300	$1,012,000	10.9%
42	Washington and Lee University	Private	$177,700	$1,008,000	11.1%
43	Bucknell University	Private	$184,600	$1,001,000	11%
44	Johns Hopkins University	Private	$190,100	$998,800	10.9%
45	University of Virginia (UVA)	Public (Out-of-State)	$149,000	$968,400	11.5%
46	University of California, San Diego (UCSD)	Public (In-State)	$106,600	$966,900	12.6%
47	University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)	Public (In-State)	$94,100	$961,200	13.1%
48	University of Southern California (USC)	Private	$193,000	$950,400	10.7%
49	Boston College	Private	$189,100	$927,600	10.7%
50	Swarthmore College	Private	$188,200	$904,100	10.6%
51	College of William and Mary	Public (In-State)	$74,720	$895,000	13.6%
52	University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)	Public (Out-of-State)	$170,100	$893,600	10.9%
53	Vanderbilt University	Private	$193,200	$892,700	10.5%
54	Washington University In St. Louis	Private	$194,200	$891,000	10.5%
55	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)	Public (In-State)	$106,500	$888,200	12.4%
56	University of California, San Diego (UCSD)	Public (Out-of-State)	$200,300	$887,300	10.4%
57	Cooper Union	Private	$188,300	$880,500	10.5%
58	University of Michigan	Public (In-State)	$84,690	$875,400	13.1%
59	Carleton College	Private	$182,600	$875,200	10.6%
60	Bates College	Private	$190,800	$861,200	10.4%
61	Case Western Reserve University	Private	$214,400	$859,300	10.1%
62	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)	Public (In-State)	$83,270	$854,300	13.1%
63	Fairfield University	Private	$183,900	$846,200	10.5%
64	California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (CalPoly)	Public (In-State)	$86,440	$844,000	12.9%
65	Fordham University	Private	$188,100	$842,000	10.4%
66	Northwestern University	Private	$194,400	$841,100	10.3%
67	College of William and Mary	Public (Out-of-State)	$143,500	$832,400	11.2%
68	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)	Public (Out-of-State)	$175,400	$831,600	10.6%
69	Gettysburg College	Private	$176,800	$830,000	10.5%
70	Bentley University	Private	$175,900	$823,200	10.5%
71	Texas A&M University	Public (In-State)	$88,540	$816,000	12.7%
72	University of California, Davis (UC Davis)	Public (In-State)	$114,400	$813,900	11.8%
73	California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (CalPoly)	Public (Out-of-State)	$137,300	$808,900	11.2%
74	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)	Public (Out-of-State)	$142,600	$808,000	11.1%
75	University of Michigan	Public (Out-of-State)	$165,400	$804,400	10.6%
76	George Washington University (GWU)	Private	$206,100	$801,900	10%
77	Brigham Young University (BYU)	Private	$58,450	$797,000	14.1%
78	Emory University	Private	$184,400	$796,800	10.3%
79	Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut)	Private	$191,800	$792,300	10.1%
80	Saint Mary's College of Maryland	Public (In-State)	$96,930	$791,100	12.3%
81	New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)	Public (In-State)	$117,400	$783,900	11.6%
82	Dickinson College	Private	$185,100	$781,800	10.2%
83	Texas A&M University	Public (Out-of-State)	$135,500	$779,300	11.2%
84	Clarkson University	Private	$201,300	$779,200	10%
85	Grinnell College	Private	$163,000	$771,500	10.6%
86	University of Maryland (UMD)	Public (In-State)	$101,400	$770,000	12.1%
87	University of California, Irvine (UCI)	Public (In-State)	$108,200	$769,300	11.8%
88	University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)	Public (In-State)	$117,000	$767,900	11.6%
89	New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)	Public (Out-of-State)	$154,300	$763,500	10.7%
90	Saint Mary's College of Maryland	Public (Out-of-State)	$136,800	$761,200	11.1%
91	Miami University	Public (In-State)	$121,700	$760,500	11.4%
92	Wellesley College	Private	$186,300	$758,800	10.1%
93	Kettering University	Private	$204,000	$758,400	9.8%
94	Trinity College	Private	$188,800	$757,000	10.1%
95	Pepperdine University	Private	$185,900	$748,100	10.1%
96	Tulane University	Private	$226,600	$748,000	9.5%
97	University of California, Davis (UC Davis)	Public (Out-of-State)	$207,500	$738,500	9.7%
98	Miami University	Public (Out-of-State)	$149,400	$738,000	10.7%
99	Muhlenberg College	Private	$168,900	$735,000	10.3%
100	Middlebury College	Private	$195,600	$733,800	9.9%