It pays to go to Duke

Jul 21 2011, Written by Melissa Dalis in News, 0 Comments

Dukies, on average, rack in the 7th highest mid-career salary ($113,000) of students at any university, according to PayScale’s 2011-2012 Salary Report published today.

Princeton University’s students had the highest mid-career median salary of $130,000, followed by California Institute of Technology, Harvey Mudd College, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dartmouth College, Duke, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Colgate University and Stanford University.

Coming out of college, however, Duke students aren’t doing as well as students from many other universities. In the starting median salary category, Duke only ranked 33rd with $54,400. Engineering schools like MIT, Caltech and Harvey Mudd scored best in this category. Other schools ranked surprisingly low—Harvard at 37th, Columbia University at 49th, Dartmouth at 59th and Yale University at 73rd.

In the Top 10 Southern Colleges by Salary Potential category, Duke has the highest mid-career median salary but follows Georgia Institute of Technology for the second highest starting carerr salary.

Last year Duke ranked 9th on the Highest Median Salaries list, but actually made $4,000 more on average than this year—blame it on the economy?