Many colleges and universities help prepare students for life after graduation by hosting job fairs, offering career coaching, and partnering with companies on co-op programs. And plenty of schools have a history of placing their graduates into big companies.
Still, as tuition prices skyrocket, more Americans are questioning the value of a college education.
That makes it essential to find out where the price of tuition will genuinely pay off.
In a September 2025 Gallup poll, just 35% of respondents rated college as "very important." Meanwhile, student debt has reached $1.863 trillion as of July 2026, and recent grads face an unemployment rate of about 5.7%. Even so, bachelor's degree holders earned 62% more in 2024 than those with just a high school diploma, according to College Board.
Stacker ranked the 25 colleges whose graduates earn the most using the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard. Schools are ranked by median earnings 10 years after enrolling (rounded to the nearest $100), with ties broken by earnings six years after enrolling. Earnings cover federal aid recipients who were working and not enrolled in school.
The list includes four-year main campuses with at least 300 undergraduates. Standalone medical, nursing, art, and religious schools were excluded, as were the Army, Navy, and Air Force academies, whose students don't receive federal aid. Slides also include each school's graduation rate and share of STEM degrees.
Read on to see which business-focused schools crack the top 10 and which tiny engineering school lands in the top five. And be sure to check out related Stacker topics, such as college majors that make the most money.
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1 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $111,200
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $98,500
- Graduation rate: 95%
- Percent STEM degrees: 44%
Dartmouth's 2022 class reported 48% of grads earning $90,000 or more. Finance and consulting are the top industries, accounting for 44% of jobs among the class. Major employers for Dartmouth grads are Amazon, Dartmouth itself, and Goldman Sachs.
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2 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $112,200
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $84,200
- Graduation rate: 90%
- Percent STEM degrees: 23%
Economics, finance, biology, and political science number among the most popular majors at Boston College. Alumni have gone on to hold top leadership positions at companies like Goldman Sachs, Google, and Condé Nast.
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3 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $113,000
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $89,200
- Graduation rate: 80%
- Percent STEM degrees: 83%
RPI has had great success placing graduates into top-paying jobs. In 2020, the average starting salary across all disciplines ranged from $54,000 to more than $100,000 (in the computer sciences). The school also has co-op programs with 3M, Apple, Toyota, and many other companies.
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4 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $113,100
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $94,100
- Graduation rate: 95%
- Percent STEM degrees: 37%
At Notre Dame, the class of 2021 reported only a 2% rate of grads still seeking employment. While most Fighting Irish go into the job market post-grad, about a quarter choose graduate studies. Among the most popular employers taking ND graduates are Deloitte, Epic, and Goldman Sachs.
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5 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $113,500
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $93,100
- Graduation rate: 90%
- Percent STEM degrees: 91%
Worcester Polytechnic Institute reported an average starting salary for 2020 PhD grads of over $100,000. The actuarial mathematics, data science, and bioinformatics and computational biology programs had particularly high rates of placing graduates into employment.
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6 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $113,500
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $97,200
- Graduation rate: 95%
- Percent STEM degrees: 48%
Students from Cornell's popular College of Agriculture and Life Sciences had an average starting salary of over $62,000. Multiple graduates from the agriculture school found work in Europe and Asia. Schoolwide, only 3% of 2021 graduates were still seeking employment, according to the school's latest report.
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7 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $113,900
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $95,400
- Graduation rate: 96%
- Percent STEM degrees: 43%
For the class of 2022, Duke grads leaned towards jobs in technology, e-commerce, and financial services. Those who chose to go on to graduate studies, schools like Harvard, the University of Illinois, and Duke itself were among the most popular choices.
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8 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $114,200
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $95,400
- Graduation rate: 94%
- Percent STEM degrees: 83%
Georgia Tech is regularly ranked as a top school for return on investment. Bachelor's graduates from the 2023-24 academic year reported a median starting salary of $84,000, and top employers included Apple, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, and SpaceX.
Villanova University Digital Library // Flickr
9 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $115,400
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $92,500
- Graduation rate: 93%
- Percent STEM degrees: 30%
Villanova reports that 96.7% of graduates have a successful placement rate, with over 70% employed and others involved in continuing education or other pursuits. Finance and consulting are the top two fields recent Villanova graduates enter.
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10 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $116,300
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $89,400
- Graduation rate: 85%
- Percent STEM degrees: 46%
At Lehigh, 97% of the 2021 class found placement after graduation. The college of business had the highest placement rate at 97%.
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11 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $117,200
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $96,600
- Graduation rate: 87%
- Percent STEM degrees: 29%
More than 90% of Santa Clara's graduates reported employment within 6 months. One of Santa Clara's most famous alumni, Steve Nash, was a star NBA point guard.
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12 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $118,400
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $83,700
- Graduation rate: 96%
- Percent STEM degrees: 36%
Full-time employed graduates (working in the U.S.) from Yale's 2022 class had a mean starting salary of $76,359. Finance and consulting jobs accounted for almost 30% of jobs for recent Yale grads, with Yale itself being the top employer. More than half of those employed worked in large organizations with 500 or more employees.
Jeffrey Vock Photography // Wikimedia Commons
13 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $118,400
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $95,700
- Graduation rate: 89%
- Percent STEM degrees: 79%
Stevens Institute of Technology historically places at least 95% of graduates within six months after commencement. Engineering and science students can gain real world experience prior to graduation through internships and the school's cooperative education program.
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14 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $121,700
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $99,800
- Graduation rate: 97%
- Percent STEM degrees: 31%
Almost half of all UPenn grads found jobs through UPenn's career services office. Financial services was the top hiring industry, with many graduates working in consulting and technology as well.
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15 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $122,000
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $97,100
- Graduation rate: 97%
- Percent STEM degrees: 44%
Harvard graduates largely go into the finance, consulting, and technology sectors. Nearly two-thirds of all graduates expect a starting salary in excess of $70,000 right out of the gate. Eight U.S. presidents graduated with Harvard degrees.
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16 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $125,300
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $102,200
- Graduation rate: 94%
- Percent STEM degrees: 63%
Hundreds of Carnegie Mellon alums go on to roles at Apple, 3M, Google, and Facebook. Grads, in large part, find work or move on to graduate studies programs on either the coasts or stick to the Pittsburgh area (where CMU is located).
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17 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $125,300
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $112,800
- Graduation rate: 92%
- Percent STEM degrees: 52%
Amazon, Meta, and LinkedIn are a few of the tech companies taking Stanford graduates. But not everyone at the Silicon Valley school works in tech—humanities, sciences, and engineering are also popular majors.
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18 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $126,400
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $92,800
- Graduation rate: 88%
- Percent STEM degrees: 6%
Bentley touts a 98% job placement rate, and The Princeton Review has ranked it #1 for career services. The school site features a collection of blog posts about internship preparation, and Jay Leno briefly attended Bentley before transferring to Emerson College, where he later joked during a commencement speech that he was unfocused in college.
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19 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $127,500
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $102,100
- Graduation rate: 90%
- Percent STEM degrees: 17%
Claremont McKenna is known for its economics programs, computer sciences, and international relations majors. Numerous chief executive officers graduated from the school, among them Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture.
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20 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $133,500
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $97,900
- Graduation rate: 97%
- Percent STEM degrees: 50%
The class of 2022 was business-heavy, with nearly half of employed grads going into that sector. Engineering, health care, and science and technology were also popular fields. Princeton grads average more than $90,000 per annum in earnings.
Olin College of Engineering
21 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $138,800
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $112,600
- Graduation rate: 96%
- Percent STEM degrees: 100%
Olin is tiny—fewer than 400 undergrads—but U.S. News & World Report ranked it the #3 undergraduate engineering college in the country for 2026. Members of the class of 2025 reported an average starting salary of $98,095, and alumni have built careers at Apple, Google, Tesla, SpaceX, and Boston Dynamics.
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22 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $139,000
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $98,500
- Graduation rate: 92%
- Percent STEM degrees: 0%
Babson reports that 99% of graduates are employed or in graduate school within six months of graduation. Entrepreneurial spirit is encouraged at Babson: More than 5% of grads started businesses. Financial services and technology are the top industries where graduates land, with a significant number working in retail, apparel, or fashion.
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23 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $152,600
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $137,500
- Graduation rate: 96%
- Percent STEM degrees: 83%
Internships are big at MIT: 42% of the class of 2022 received a full-time job offer as a result of theirs. Harvard, Cambridge, and MIT were top graduate school destinations for MIT grads, while some went directly to work at Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton. Other students found jobs with industry leaders in health care, government, energy/utilities, and information and technology.
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24 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $164,200
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $132,500
- Graduation rate: 93%
- Percent STEM degrees: 74%
About 60% of Harvey Mudd graduates hit the job market immediately, commanding a median starting salary of $87,500. Astronauts Stan Love and George Nelson are Harvey Mudd alumni, as is Eric B. Kim, a marketing visionary who worked for Samsung and Intel.
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25 / 25- Median earnings 10 years after enrolling: $166,600
- Median earnings 6 years after enrolling: $124,300
- Graduation rate: 90%
- Percent STEM degrees: 99%
Bankrate deems Caltech the best value for research opportunities, and UniversityHQ notes that graduates can expect to earn over $2.5 million in 20 years. Caltech faculty and alumni include numerous Nobel Laureates.
