UIUC vs CMU for undergraduate Computer Science

ucbalumnus
Tue, 30 Mar 2021 23:03:46 +0000

Regarding post-graduation pay levels, College Scorecard https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/ lists the following median pay for graduates who received federal financial aid as students:

$160,116 CMU
$136,499 Stanford
$127,993 MIT
$125,388 UCB
$101,592 UIUC

Probably the big caveat here is that these probably include signing bonuses, since some of the numbers seem to be a lot higher than what the schools’ own career surveys list (although there could be a difference between graduates who received federal financial aid versus those responding to the schools’ own career surveys).

In terms of recruiting, most of the big companies will recruit widely. Small companies may recruit much more sparingly, if they recruit from colleges at all (versus looking for experienced people), and may not travel much or at all (especially if they are near universities that they like to recruit at).

Still, even a really big signing bonus (which may not necessarily be because you attended a specific college) is unlikely to be anywhere close to $200,000.