Hi all, my son has fairly high stats & got accepted to SCU via EA majoring in EE/CompE. SCU was a backup but now a good option since a competitive merit scholarship was offered. We didn’t know much about SCU before but was recommended. SCU check a lot of boxes and has a decent business program that my son also wants to check out. More importantly, job, internship, and ROI (Return on investment) all seem pretty good. The admission rate is fairly high though but that could vary with major. I can’t help but wonder how much of the higher ROI is due to SCU or are the stats skewed due to a portion of students that were already connected through families in the Silicon Valley. Any thoughts or insights are appreciated.
Here’s their career report.
What it doesn’t show is locations but if it’s heavily Silicon Valley weighted, the salaries aren’t great. But they are competitive with other schools.
You can ask the career center for outcomes by major with location. Perhaps they are placing outside the SV which then would make the #s look better.
My kid is an SCU grad. The vast majority of her friend group do NOT work in the Silicon Valley. Her closest friends are all doctors in other locations (as is my kid).
Honestly, we have nothing but good things to say about this college, and we were basically full pay.
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Thanks for sharing your first hand experience.
Thanks for sharing
The best source of information on ROI is Payscale. You can check it out here:
https://www.payscale.com/college-roi
They provide lists of college with rankings based on mid career earnings (20 years) for graduates with bachelor’s degrees only. Santa Clara ranks 42nd overall, which is excellent. Like you, I assumed that their rankings were skewed by their engineering graduates going to work in Silicon Valley.
But when I looked at college rankings based only on the ROI of engineering graduates, SCU is ranked only 122nd, which is good but does not explain their #42 overall. They graduate twice as many Business majors as engineers, so I checked their ranking for graduates with business degrees. There they rank an eye popping 15th.
Those business majors may be working in Silicon Valley or the salaries may simply reflect higher salaries generally in California (and higher cost of living). I have no way of knowing that.
The Wall Street Journal came out with a “Best Colleges” list this year. Their methodology was also heavily skewed toward ROI. Their findings for SCU were very consistent with the Payscale’s findings, ranking SCU 38th overall.
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Both of our kids have applied in recent cycles and I remember being quite struck by the way they emphasized their ability to help place students post-graduation - to a much greater degree than any other campus we visited. They have kind of a shtick where they talk about professors writing down names of alumni contacts in companies on the back of their business cards for their students to connect with. I say this because we heard it in both 2022 and 2024. Obviously they are aware that ROI is foremost in parent’s minds when considering SCU.
Fast forward - a family friend is a 2024 graduate of the ME program, and 9 months out STILL looking for work. From what he says, career services has offered little to no help in getting him connected. He has several friends that also graduated and are looking for work, or working retail.
I’m not suggesting that he did not receive an excellent education, but perhaps reflective of the statistics @Bill_Marsh cited above, the ROI may be better for business students than engineering majors. As your son is looking at both, that may not be an issue for you.
I have no idea if the engineering field is just exceptionally hard to break into at the moment. Perhaps it is just the market. Our friend is extremely bright and personable and has applied widely with no luck. Of course this is just one person’s experience and I’m not implying it is representative, but just anecdotal.
I’d recommend your son dig deeper with them about approximately how many of their engineering students are able to to do internships and go on to FT work in their field post graduation. Good luck to him and congratulations on the scholarship!
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Thank you for sharing. It definitely encourage us to a closer look into their engineering majors and further into the business program. Either way, he definitely planned on looking into Business as minor, double, or transfer. Hopefully, transferring or double major won’t be too difficult of a process.
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In light of what @islandmama1 has said, I’ll note that these rankings do not reflect the experience of recent graduates. The Wall Street Journal methodology used salaries of graduates 10 years out and the Payscale rankings used salaries of graduates 20 years out.
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If you look at the career outcomes I posted above and I’m not sure how they determine this - they have a metric called good to excellent prep for a career and life.
For business, both are 83%.
For engineering, it’s 73% and 50%. So engineers aren’t feeling prepared for life, etc.
I’d reach out to career services for more data. Job types, companies, locations.
That’s how you determine - you want the entire picture vs one off anecdotes.
Their report is very high level, incomplete so demand more info. It’s their job to sell you on attending.
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With all due respect my ‘one off’ was the story of someone who has just completed the actual program, and I made no claim it was representative of anything larger than one experience. I also suggested a deeper dive.
It’s really no wonder there are so many lurkers who are afraid to share experiences on this board. The passive aggressive put downs are real.
Merry Christmas.
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It was no put down. Nor directed at you.
I was simply saying one off stories don’t give a complete picture.
One should find complete data if they’re looking for an ROI as Op is trying to determine.
That’s all I was saying.
There will always be one off success stories and one off struggles, no matter the school.
So aggregated data is the best bet for making a determination.
Merry Christmas to you.
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Santa Clara U is well-thought of here in Silicon Valley. And I don’t believe it’s because of any family connections, IMO. Now Stanford OTOH… 
When D21 applied to SCU and was accepted she received one of their scholarships, which brought the COA down a lot, but not quite enough to be competitive with our CA public schools.
A couple other negatives for her were location, too close to home, and SCU didn’t have the exact program she wanted.
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Thanks for sharing. SCU actually checks a lot of boxes for my son. We are in SoCal so he will be away from home but not that far which is perfect. Beautiful campus + good balanced student body is a plus. In terms of major, he wants to start in STEM but able to look into business. He seems to like the private school settings but the cost is a concern; therefore, for privates, it’s all about the merit scholarship. We all think that college life shouldn’t just be studying all the time but I secretly hope that he will be challenged intellectually because I am curious.
Looks like a reasonable jump to businesses - internally. Maybe some of his gen ed can match those below in case he decides to transfer to business.
Students who plan to apply to the School of Business in the spring may be asking what classes to take in preparation. While there are no course requirements to apply to the Leavey School of Business for Internal Transfer, the following is a list of courses which will satisfy requirements in both the University and Business core:
- Critical Thinking and Writing 1 and 2
- Math 30 or Math 11 for all business majors
- Additional calculus requirement for ECON and FNCE majors: See department information: Math 31, Math 12 or FNCE 186
- Cultures and Ideas 1 and 2
- 2nd language (Required to 2nd course for business students – e.g. SPAN 2)
- ECON 1 (social science)
- PHIL 6 (ethics)
- Three Religion, Theology and Culture courses
- Diversity
- Arts
- Natural Science
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My two cents is the common ROI measures as applied to ALL colleges reflect a lot of correlation and not causation–correlation with individual attributes, sometimes family attributes, industry preferences, locational preferences, and on and on.
And then to the extent they also factor in average cost or some such measure–that is irrelevant, what matters is your actual cost.
Given this, you should understand that merely matriculating at a college with good stats is not going to guarantee anything. You’ll still have to make relevant choices, perform well in relevant ways, and so on to achieve any given outcome. And indeed, even if that path is less common at another college, it may still be available for you if you do those things.
But that said, if in fact a path you might be interested in following is relatively well-followed at a certain college, that college is typically not a BAD choice. Maybe not necessary, maybe not the best in all circumstances, but there is a comfort in knowing it works relatively often.
The thing I think you want to avoid is paying an uncomfortable amount, including loading up on a lot of debt, on the theory the observed ROI stats justify that investment. I think that sort of reasoning can easily backfire, and even when it “works” it can be bad to the extent it forces you to choose not what would really be the best path, but instead only among those paths which will be sufficient to service those debts.
So it sounds to me like your son would be getting a real deal on Santa Clara, which is already great because it provides a very good education and a very good experience to many students.
Then to the extent it demonstrably helps some kids follow paths of interest–also great. Again, very likely it was at most playing a support role, not actually making that happen–which I would say of all colleges. But it is nice to have that support.
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Thanks for sharing a directly relevant first hand experience.
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To our family, ROI did not mean “get a high paying job”. It meant getting a very good college education. We (and our kid) feel the Jesuits have higher education well crafted. Our kid got an excellent education at SCU, and the emphasis on giving back to the community is woven throughout the coursework. That ROI was enough for our family.
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Totally agree @islandmama1
I posted seeking support after a rejection (with lots of context and just really a “my kid is hurting and I don’t understand, I’m a first timer” perspective) several weeks back and two responders really dug into me, including one that is on this thread too.
There are a lot more normal and measured, helpful people on here than the judgemental ones- just remember that.
Happy holiday season all!
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A reminder that College Confidential is a welcoming and friendly community. We do NOT tolerate personal attacks or disparaging of others, particularly students. Thank you for your understanding and happy holidays.
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