So I was accepted to NYU (Stern), Northwestern (Weinberg) and CMU (Tepper) for this year’s admissions, and am having a hard time deciding between the 3.
One of the criteria I looked at was the starting salaries of the respective graduates. I do know that these statistics are somewhat skewed and inaccurate, and also depends on every individual. But I can’t help but notice the significant discrepancy between Stern/Tepper and NU.
Stern and Tepper grads earn about $75k on average, but I see that Northwestern grads earn only $52k. I know that overall, Northwestern is regarded as a “better” and higher-ranked school, and I was planning to read Economics at Weinberg, but the significantly lower starting salary is drawing me towards Finance at Stern.
Apples and oranges. With no BBA degree available at NU, impossible to compare. Overall, among all grads, early and mid career earnings if anything higher from NU than CMU or NYU BUT would doubt there is any significant difference for the same individual with a given ability and career track. Salaries of grads are always skewed by geography as well (e.g. higher bicoastally with higher cost of living/salary lines to compensate) and the career aspirations of the student body itself (the Peace Corps generally pays less well than Consulting firms). Look at these numbers with a healthy degree of skepticism.
Journalism, theatre, education, communications, and humanities majors (all of whom are at NU but none of whom would be at Stern or Tepper) don’t typically make high starting salaries.
But note that when you compare like with like, NU humanities and CS majors are in the top 10 salary-wise among like majors while NU engineering majors are in the top 25 among engineering majors.
Again, apples to oranges. You’re comparing Northwestern’s College of Arts and Sciences (which houses psychology, history, econ, language, religion, etc.) with undergraduate business schools. Northwestern does not have an undergraduate business program or college. You can, however, major in Econ and minor in Business Institutions or get the Integrated Marketing Communications certificate or the business enterprise certificate.
75k is higher than what Harvard fresh grads earn. Accounting/finance/engineering grads from even schools outside of top-75 are gonna earn more than liberal arts majors even from Harvard/Yale on average (except perhaps econ).
You may try to email the program director of Kellogg cert and see if he/she has the salary data for you. Econ, MMSS, Kellogg cert would be the ones you want to use for the comparison.