How much does your chosen major matter?
- Erik Fogg
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
MIT has the highest mid-career median pay of any university in the world. Here is the top 10 as of 2024:
MIT
Princeton
US Naval Academy
Harvey Mudd
Babson
Stanford
Santa Clara University
Dartmouth College
University of Pennsylvania
Harvard University
There are some surprises there – many people don’t know much about Harvey Mudd or Santa Clara. One thing is common among all 10 of these schools: they graduate a whole lot of engineers. You might also notice that a bunch of well-known schools aren’t on this list: Yale, Brown, Duke, Chicago, Columbia, Berkeley, etc.
There is a myth–now likely largely debunked due to overwhelming evidence–that goes, “it does not matter what you study, as long as you go to a good school.” This could not be more wrong. Which school you attend does not matter all that much for your future job performance and income, because it is a reflection of what matters most–your GMA. But which major you select, and whether you use it in your work, matters a lot. MIT, Princeton, and the US Naval Academy graduate many engineers, and engineers make a lot of money. The average engineering and computer science graduate makes 50% more in starting salary than the average humanities major. This effect compounds over time.
Major Cluster | 2022 Starting Salary (NACE) | Amount More than Humanities Majors |
Computer Science | $76,000 | +50% |
Engineering | $74,000 | +46% |
Mathematics & Physical Sciences | $67,000 | +32% |
Social Sciences | $61,000 | +20% |
Business | $61,000 | +20% |
Agriculture | $57,800 | +14% |
Communications | $55,500 | +9% |
Humanities | $50,700 | 0% |
There are two reasons engineers make more money than humanities majors:
They have a set of knowledge and particular skills that are in very high demand by employers, and very well-suited to high-value jobs
There is evidence that cognitive skills such as critical thinking improve for engineers more than for humanities majors, and those with better critical thinking skills tend to perform better at work
This is obvious, but many families drive themselves crazy trying to get into the “best school,” and put comparatively little thought into what job the student will have after graduation. Families spend hundreds or thousands of hours, and often many thousands of dollars, attempting to increase the student’s chances of getting into a slightly higher-ranked university, when there is very little evidence to suggest that the university makes a large (or any) difference in future earnings.
Conversely, and irrationally, very little time is spent in high school finding the overlap between the student’s passion and high-earning employment. What jobs, which are in demand, will the student love? Have they explored all of those options? Do they know themselves well enough to know what major they will pick, stick with, love, and continue into work? Surely at least equal time and resource should be spent answering this question as attempting to gain a place in a higher-ranked university. In fact, data suggest that the return on investment here is substantially higher.
Let us make a quick comparison between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, about an hour away from each other.
MIT is much higher ranked and has a higher average SAT score. Does this translate to dramatically higher earnings for any given college major?
Major (Bachelor’s) | Starting Salary, MIT (2020) | Starting Salary, WPI (2020) |
Computer Science | $119,000 | $88,000 |
Mechanical Engineering | $75,000 | $70,000 |
Biomedical Engineering | $70,000 | $65,000 |
Biology | $53,000 | $48,000 |
The MIT computer scientist certainly makes significantly more, but the humble WPI computer science graduate makes more money out of the gate than the mighty MIT mechanical engineer or biomedical engineer. The humble WPI mechanical engineer is also making 40% more money than the Harvard English major.
For a given major, the differences in salaries are easily explained by differences in median GMA as measured by SAT. Smarter computer scientists are more desirable in an industry that is short on labor and highly values problem-solving ability. Between MIT and WPI, which major you choose matters significantly more than which school you attend–if GMA is accounted for, which school you attend may not matter at all.
Engineering is a particularly useful choice because it is frequently the case that engineers end up in work that reflects their major. Fully 60% of college graduates don’t use their major at all in their work. They make substantially less than those that do.
If making money after college is an important consideration, you get the greatest return by investing time in picking a major that leads to a high-earning job and also makes you happy. If you pick a high-value major and you like it, you will graduate on time and begin a high-earning career, whether or not you attend an Ivy+ college or not. It is better to be a WPI engineer than a Harvard English major. It is significantly better to be a WPI engineer than a student from any university that does not use the content of their major in their employment. Discovering what high-paying work you are well suited to and will enjoy, will help you stick with a chosen degree through college and after.
The limiting factor in all of this—your GMA—is outside of your control, and therefore has zero return on any investment of worry or effort. For all relevant references please view the blog here
Comments