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University Graduate Career Surveys
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Replies to: University Graduate Career Surveys
Occupation and Salary Information
RPI: Publication Name:
The Colorado State University Career Center | Students | Major and Career Exploration
(survey taken from two weeks before to two to six weeks after graduation)
For example, Stanford Computer Science graduates expect to earn around $83,000, while at my school, Virginia Tech, Computer Science graduates can expect to earn around $65,000. Why is there such a huge difference? Virginia Tech still has one of best engineering programs in the nation.
Is the difference because so many Stanford students go on to work for top consulting and top finance firms?
Go look at more traditional engineering majors and you probably won't see that huge of a difference.
It doesn't hurt that Stanford is in the Silicon Valley, which is a hot spot for CS majors and jobs.
What career surveys do not tell you is a normalized average, so you have no good way of comparing if the average of one school is skewed due to its location. $85,000 in San Francisco goes about as far as $52,000 in Richmond, VA, so actually the $65k base your friend from VT is making probably gives him higher spending power than someone making 20k more in California. According to Salary.com's salary calculator, someone earning $85k in San Francisco would be likely to earn around $70k for the same job by the same employer in Richmond. I'm guessing that a higher percentage of Stanford CS grads work in Silicon Valley at big tech companies, since it's very easy to recruit so close, and a higher percentage of VT grads go to smaller regional companies.
WG02: Wages of Graduates, List Programs By Institution
College of Natural Sciences
Computer Science, Biology, Chemistry, Math, Physics, Etc. Majors
Salary Survey
Class of 2011 Immediate Postgraduate Plans | CareerLAB