The Top Colleges for High-Paying Careers in Finance, Tech and Consulting

The list includes some familiar names—and quite a few surprises among both private and public universities

By Alyssa Lukpat of The WSJ. The article also includes extensive detailed tables on how much the graduates at different colleges earn. One thing to remember about the schools mentioned here is that the students who get accepted to them are already high quality and that also contributes to their later success. Excerpts:

"The colleges putting graduates onto the most lucrative pathways in finance, tech and management consulting include many schools you’d expect—Ivy League schools, for instance, and top public universities."

"Graduates with some of the highest salaries in these fields attended schools like Baruch College, San Jose State University and the U.S. Naval Academy"

"proximity to industry hubs and rigorous curricula are just as important as strong alumni networks and prestigious degrees"

"The rankings—which include the top 20 public and private universities for launching graduates into high-earning jobs—aim to answer: If the chosen career and the number of years in the field are the same, what effect does the undergraduate school somebody went to have on their salary?"

"The effect can be huge. In the first 10 years after graduation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni who go into finance average $73,608 a year in salary more than the median college graduate in the field"

"The average yearly salary for MIT grads in finance in those years is around $175,000."

"The average salary for the median graduate in finance through the first 10 years of their career is just over $100,000" 

"The schools in the rankings have offered graduates an array of resources to enrich their careers"

"Grads from Ivy League and top public schools can tap vast alumni networks. Liberal-arts alumni learned soft skills that can help them ascend corporate ranks. Service-academy graduates acquired potentially lucrative traits like perseverance and diligence. And recruiters flock to schools around Silicon Valley and Wall Street."

"The top five private colleges for high-paying jobs in finance are MIT, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth College. The top five public schools are the University of Michigan; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Virginia; the U.S. Military Academy, and William & Mary."

"The top private schools for high-paying tech jobs are Harvard, Princeton, Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology and Yale University. The top public colleges are UC Berkeley; the Naval Academy; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Washington, and Michigan."

"The top private colleges for high-paying jobs in consulting are Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. The top public schools are the U.S. Military Academy, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Michigan, UC Berkeley and Virginia."

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Why do employers pay extra money to people who study a bunch of subjects in college that they don’t actually need you to know? Signaling (2020) (Economist Bryan Caplan therefore reckons that roughly 80% of the education premium comes from signaling (getting a degree signals that you were already smart and hard workingh) and only 20% from marketable skills)