Tufts vs Harvard vs Vanderbilt vs Upenn

Mastadon
Mon, 18 Apr 2016 02:21:27 +0000

@Penn95 - my apologies, I just realized that I did not provide the Payscale link
@much2learn- The maze of data available is a problem, I will try to explain.

There are only 2 integrated “national” salary databases that I know of -the Payscale’s database and the College Scorecard database (which is compiled by the US Government). All the rankings that I am aware of use one of these two databases.

There are also some state level databases (Texas comes to mind) and some college level databases (like the one you provided for Penn). More and more colleges seem to be providing their own databases.

They all have pros and cons, and cross-checking them against each other can provide insights.

College Factual uses the Payscale database, so I don’t see it adding any value for salary data and it has some issues.

The Payscale website has gotten much better over the years, and the database has been growing. Now it allows one to filter the database by type of school or by major just by clicking on the pull-down tabs and selecting an entry.

They also do a statistical check on the sample size and if it is not large enough, the school is not listed.

When sorting by type, some small schools (for example Amherst) may not appear in a given year because the size of the pool of reported salaries is not big enough. The bigger the school, the more likely it is that the data base will be large enough to to pass the test.

When sorting by major, you are subdividing the school’s pool of data into smaller sub-groups, so typically it has to be a pretty big school or a very popular major at a mid-size school to generate a big enough sample to pass the sample size test. So schools like Tufts and Harvard will not appear in the engineering subject listing every year. I have never seen either Tufts or Harvard appear in the Computer Science list. In the past, I have not tracked Penn, do I do not know its history, but it is not in this years list.

The fact the College Factual is providing salary data from the Payscale database by subject for a school that does not appear on Payscale’s subject list, suggests that they are using the data without performing a validity test for sample size. That is why I tend not to trust the College Factual salary data or the resulting ranking that uses the data. I do sometimes use the ranking as a way to identify potential schools of interest, but I do not take the ranking literally and always cross check the salary against the report from Payscale.

Payscale claims an accuracy of:
plus or minus 5% for “large” schools
plus or minus 10% for “Ivy league” schools (due to the wide salary variation)
plus or minus 10% for small schools (i.e. LACs)
plus or minus 5% for salary by major (due to smaller salary variation)

If possible, I like to look at two years of data to cross check, but the data for some years is not available.

Engineering - Tufts, Penn - Harvard sample too small
School…Early Career…Mid Career 2015-2016

12 Tufts.................$67,600..............$128,000

28 UPenn..............$69,700..............$121,000

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-majors/engineering
Computer Science - everybody too small
http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-majors/computer-science?page=13
Humanities - Tufts, Penn, Harvard sample too small 2015-2016
School…Early Career…Mid Career

1 Tufts..................$56,200................$132,000

3 UPenn..............$49,200................$105,000

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-majors/humanities
Business - only Penn has undergrad Business 2015-2016
School…Early Career…Mid Career

5 UPenn...............$69,400................$122,000

7 Babson..............$59,800................$121,000

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-majors/business
Social Sciences - Penn, Harvard - Tufts sample too small 2015-2016
School…Early Career…Mid Career

1 UPenn.................$58,400...............$140,000

4 Harvard...............$62,400...............$129,000

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-majors/social-sciences
All Majors, filtered to only include research universities 2015-2016
School…Early Career…Mid Career

1 Harvard...............$61,400...............$126,000

6 UPenn.................$60,300...............$120,000

9 Tufts....................$54,200...............$115,000

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/best-schools-by-type/bachelors/research-universities
All Majors, filtered to only include research universities 2013-2014 (2015 not available)

4 Harvard...............$55,300...............$119,000

10 Tufts..................$48,800...............$115,000

14UPenn................$57,200...............$109,000

http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2014/best-schools-by-type/research-universities

College Scorecard data is new this year and reports salaries for all majors 10 years after enrollment (not graduation) and averages in the 9th year. There is other data available in the database for anybody to extract, so be wary as to what data and methodology is being used by the ranking. In the link I provided below, I filtered out all schools with a graduation rate below 88% and included all costs over $1000 and all salaries over $1000 and sorted on Salary After Attending.

School..............Salary............Carnegie Classification

MCPHS…$116,400…(Mass College of Pharmacy)
MIT…$91,600…Balanced Arts and Sciences Plus Professions
St Paul’s…$88,700…(School of Nursing-Queens)
Harvard…$87,200… Arts and Sciences Focus
Babson…$85,500…Specialty- Business
Stevens Inst…$82,800…Professions Focused (Mostly Engineering/CS)
UPenn…$78,200…Balanced Arts and Sciences & Professions
Princeton…$75,100…Arts and Sciences Plus Professions
Columbia…$72,900…Arts and Sciences Plus Professions
Cornell…$70,900…Balanced Arts and Sciences & Professions
Tufts…$67,800…Arts and Sciences Focus
Dartmouth…$67,000…Arts and Sciences Focus
Yale…$66,000…Arts and Sciences Focus
Brown…$59,700…Arts and Sciences Focus

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?avg_net_price=1000…&completion_rate=0.88…&median_earnings=1000…&sort=salary:desc&page=0

I hope this helps, I will provide some explanation in next post - feel free to ask questions and I will try to answer them