<p>Hi!</p>
<p>I got accepted to three colleges and am leaning towards attending NYU-Poly because of thier high pay based on [College</a> Graduate Salary Statistics by Location](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/college-graduate-salary-statistics-by-location.asp]College”>Payscale Best Schools by Salary Potential) . But, I am not sure what is right for chemical engineering, please help. I can rule out UNH, but there are two that are just very good schools and I don’t know.</p>
<p>University of New Haven
Purdue University- West Lafayette
Polytechnic Institute of NYU</p>
<p>Purdue University- West Lafayette</p>
<p>First, that’s a self-reported salary survey, which is usually wrong. That’s why on school salary surveys, you’ll often see people “earning” $120,000 per year at graduation with the second highest person at $75,000 per year.</p>
<p>Second, you don’t know the sample size. If one person responded for School A and was a top student that ultimately went on to be a Neurosurgeon, that’s very different than if 300 people responded from School B.</p>
<p>Third, you’re not considering location. Purdue puts more students in the midwest, which has lower salaries and cheaper living than NYU-Poly. When your house costs $150,000 instead of $800,000, you don’t need to make as much (the mortgage difference on those two houses is $4,000 per month, or roughly $60,000 per year in salary).</p>
<p>My point is: don’t make a decision based on that website. Call both schools’ career services department and get a list of employers that visit, percent of students employed at graduation, salary surveys (watch out for high top salaries and ignore low bottom salaries - those are often the future grad students), and the number of offers per student. </p>
<p>Also, if you have a preference regarding future employment location, watch where the schools place employees to see what degrees travel well (that’s how much a degree declines in value as you move away from the university - nearly all colleges have their degrees lose value as you move farther away, exceptions are schools like Stanford, Yale, and Harvard, which actually gain value as you leave the university).</p>
<p>thanks for the input ;)</p>