A leading compensation company has released its annual list ranking colleges on median mid-career salary and the top school in New Jersey is ranked No. 13.
It just might not be the school you would think.
Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken edged Princeton University for top honor in PayScale’s 2019-20 College Salary Report.
Stevens graduates with bachelor’s degrees came in with a mid-career salary of $139,900 after 10 years of experience in the field, just a nudge over Princeton, which ranked No. 15 at $139,400. New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark came in No. 53 at $121,300.
PayScale Inc., which bills itself as the world’s leading provider of on-demand compensation data and software, sampled data from more than 3.5 million full-time, degree-holding employees. The sample included 1,736 schools for people with only a bachelor’s degree; of those schools, 305 were designated research universities.
Stevens also topped a number of other lists based on mid-career salary potential, ranking No. 5 among top research universities in the nation, such as Harvard University, Stanford University and California Institute of Technology.
“At a time when families are considering the overall cost of a college education and the value it provides to graduates, this ranking demonstrates that a Stevens education is a very strategic investment,” Stevens President Nariman Farvardin said in a statement.
“A Stevens degree is — quite literally — a ticket to a great first job and a passport to long-term career success.”
Harvey Mudd College topped the list, followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Samuel Merritt University, the Naval Academy and CalTech. Harvard was No. 6; Stanford was No. 7.
To see the complete list, click here.
Farvardin feels the technical rigor of the Stevens curriculum, combined with real-word experiences gained through internships, cooperative education, senior design projects and a required coding and entrepreneurship course, make Stevens graduates heavily recruited into competitive positions by the nation’s top employers.
Three other New Jersey schools had mid-career alumni salaries in the six figures: No. 117 Rutgers University-New Brunswick ($111,000); No. 209 Seton Hall University ($103,800); and No. 244 Rutgers University-Newark ($101,800).
Stevens officials said they feel the honor ranks up there with another recent note of distinction.
Last year, Stevens was ranked No. 2 in the nation for the smallest gender gap in earnings among its graduates, with women out-earning men by 1.6 percent, according to data reported by Forbes. That report highlighted Stevens as one of just three schools whose female graduates made more than their male counterparts.
