The right college can, the lore goes, set you up for a lifetime of prosperity — the Ivy Leagues have for generations been considered to be a one-way ticket to an exclusive network of high-earning jobs and critical connections.
While what was once considered a hardened truth is now facing more and more scrutiny, there is no denying that the graduates of some colleges end up earning far more than average.
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Even though the average American earned $54,132 at the end of 2022, the typical California Institute of Technology graduate makes $112,166 10 years after graduation.
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According to a New York Times ranking tool created with data from the Department of Labor, this was the highest post-grad salary median even with the accompanying $17,747 in median debt that graduates rack up.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology came very close behind with a median salary of $111,222. As two of the country's most prestigious science and technology colleges, the two feed a stream of graduates into companies like Google (GOOGL), Meta (META) and NASA.
With a median salary $103,246, the University of Pennsylvania was the only Ivy League and biggest university to land in the top five. The third and fourth spot were taken by small colleges specializing in finance and science and technology. Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts and Harvey Mudd College in California's Claremont have 10-year salaries of a respective $107,974 and $108,988.
Stanford and Princeton landed in the top ten alongside Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown but the rest of the spots were taken by colleges specializing in science and technology — Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.
At $27,000, the latter's median graduating debt was the highest on the list. Amid a combination of financial aid programs and wealthy students, the median debt for Princeton graduates was just $10,450.
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The picture painted by the medians and averages and graduates will not, obviously, guarantee a particular career path for any one individual — picking the right college comes down to a multitude of factors ranging from one's interests and talents to the amount of debt one is willing to take on.
"Many families are hesitant to consider lesser-known schools because they believe their children need brand-name degrees to be competitive in the job market," Financial Adviser David Ressner wrote for TheStreet's Retirement Daily. "For the most part, that is a misconception that high-priced colleges and universities are happy to perpetuate."
Making sure that college really is the future wealth entry door that many hope it will be comes down to looking not just as prestige of a given name but a full range of stats including everything from the range of student aid programs, overall debt that students finish with and the specific career trajectory that it can offer.
"Over the last several decades, the cost of college tuition has increased by five to eight percent per year, more than double the rate of inflation," Certified Financial Planner Danielle Harrison wrote for TheStreet's Real Money in 2021. "If this trend continues, today’s parents of young children could be faced with a price tag of over a quarter-million dollars per child when the time comes — that is for a four-year, public, in-state education."
