Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Accounting (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Accounting earn a median of $76,194 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $56,205 and $97,191. We rank the 552 U.S. colleges whose Accounting programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 54,391 graduates in all. That puts Accounting at #33 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Georgetown University, in District of Columbia, leads at $141,931, 90% above the median ranked school ($74,755). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $66,844 and $85,561, and the lowest earns $42,444. 253 of the 552 ranked schools (46%) match or beat the national median.
Private nonprofit colleges dominate the top 20: 19 private nonprofit, 1 public and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 56% are public. California places 4 schools in the top 20, ahead of District of Columbia (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $38,356 a year, against $18,462 across all 552 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $23,537 in federal loans, about 20% of one year of earnings. Measured against a typical high-school graduate in the same state, the median top-20 school recovers its net cost in about 1.8 years.
Showing the top 50 of 552 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Georgetown University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $141,931 | 46 | $17,500 | $40,815 | 1.6 |
| 2 | Bucknell University Lewisburg, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $130,990 | 36 † | $26,881 | $40,766 | 1.7 |
| 3 | Santa Clara University Santa Clara, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $130,087 | 61 | $18,625 | $50,062 | 2.2 |
| 4 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $126,461 | 81 | $18,000 | $41,704 | 2.0 |
| 5 | Lehigh University Bethlehem, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $125,874 | 66 | $23,179 | $36,931 | 1.7 |
| 6 | University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $121,101 | 159 | $16,491 | $32,740 | 1.6 |
| 7 | Villanova University Villanova, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $120,207 | 122 | $25,858 | $43,756 | 2.1 |
| 8 | Washington and Lee University Lexington, VA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $118,946 | 33 † | $16,750 | $23,781 | 1.2 |
| 9 | Fordham University Bronx, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $117,024 | 138 | $23,000 | $44,338 | 2.2 |
| 10 | George Washington University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $116,795 | 37 † | $24,750 | $36,586 | 1.9 |
| 11 | University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $115,909 | 81 | $19,000 | $26,780 | 1.3 |
| 12 | The Catholic University of America Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $114,909 | 27 † | $25,725 | $29,561 | 1.6 |
| 13 | College of the Holy Cross Worcester, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $114,088 | 27 † | $27,000 | $38,782 | 2.1 |
| 14 | Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $112,682 | 120 | $27,000 | $38,793 | 2.0 |
| 15 | University of Richmond University of Richmond, VA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $112,202 | 45 | $20,500 | $31,309 | 1.7 |
| 16 | Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $111,733 | 68 | $14,750 | $48,381 | 2.6 |
| 17 | The College of New Jersey Ewing, NJ Public · 4-year | $111,509 | 69 | $23,894 | $27,646 | 1.5 |
| 18 | Fairfield University Fairfield, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $110,586 | 104 | $26,633 | $48,095 | 2.6 |
| 19 | University of San Diego San Diego, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $109,142 | 84 | $24,969 | $30,365 | 1.7 |
| 20 | Bentley University Waltham, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $108,343 | 247 | $27,000 | $37,930 | 2.3 |
| 21 | Saint Mary's College of California Moraga, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $107,570 | 33 † | $25,000 | $30,378 | 1.7 |
| 22 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $106,959 | 149 | $21,500 | $25,097 | 1.4 |
| 23 | Binghamton University Vestal, NY Public · 4-year | $106,323 | 205 | $17,500 | $21,620 | 1.2 |
| 24 | Marist University Poughkeepsie, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $106,313 | 61 | $22,946 | $41,544 | 2.4 |
| 25 | Elon University Elon, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $105,707 | 56 | $20,000 | $41,555 | 2.3 |
| 26 | Muhlenberg College Allentown, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $105,494 | 31 † | $27,000 | $28,905 | 1.7 |
| 27 | University of Delaware Newark, DE Public · 4-year | $105,425 | 172 | $26,301 | $17,799 | 1.0 |
| 28 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $105,143 | 205 | $19,462 | $19,857 | 1.1 |
| 29 | Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $103,675 | 37 † | $16,200 | $40,892 | 2.4 |
| 30 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $103,662 | 268 | $16,831 | $21,315 | 1.2 |
| 31 | Quinnipiac University Hamden, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $103,533 | 58 | $23,250 | $40,675 | 2.5 |
| 32 | Loyola University Maryland Baltimore, MD Private nonprofit · 4-year | $103,352 | 104 | $27,000 | $30,574 | 1.9 |
| 33 | Providence College Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $103,245 | 88 | $27,000 | $48,523 | 3.1 |
| 34 | Seton Hall University South Orange, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $102,626 | 84 | $24,413 | $31,446 | 1.9 |
| 35 | University of Miami Coral Gables, FL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $102,344 | 49 | $17,750 | $37,244 | 2.2 |
| 36 | Chapman University Orange, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $102,147 | 41 | $20,875 | $46,555 | 2.9 |
| 37 | Baylor University Waco, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $102,011 | 201 | $20,495 | $41,104 | 2.4 |
| 38 | Texas Christian University Fort Worth, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $101,938 | 64 | $17,778 | $36,660 | 2.2 |
| 39 | Miami University-Oxford Oxford, OH Public · 4-year | $101,808 | 125 | $22,500 | $28,384 | 1.7 |
| 40 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $101,390 | 90 | $20,277 | $17,354 | 1.1 |
| 41 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $101,098 | 273 | $20,125 | $14,355 | 0.9 |
| 42 | Adelphi University Garden City, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $100,895 | 40 | $21,500 | $30,783 | 1.9 |
| 43 | Pace University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $100,797 | 173 | $25,291 | $30,892 | 1.9 |
| 44 | University of Massachusetts-Amherst Amherst, MA Public · 4-year | $100,516 | 162 | $22,867 | $22,383 | 1.5 |
| 45 | Drexel University Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $100,317 | 158 | $27,167 | $38,509 | 2.4 |
| 46 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $99,528 | 164 | $18,500 | $24,953 | 1.6 |
| 47 | Marquette University Milwaukee, WI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $99,086 | 76 | $25,000 | $31,487 | 2.0 |
| 48 | Touro University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $99,047 | 65 | $11,000 | $29,627 | 1.9 |
| 49 | James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA Public · 4-year | $98,767 | 107 | $22,500 | $23,322 | 1.5 |
| 50 | Roger Williams University Bristol, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $98,701 | 46 | $26,121 | $37,999 | 2.6 |
How this ranking is built
A school appears here only if it meets every condition below.
- Which programs count
- Main campuses only, one entry per institution. Scorecard reports program outcomes for the whole six-digit federal ID (OPEID6), so branch campuses share their parent’s numbers and are not listed twice.
- Only bachelor's degree programs in Accounting (CIP 5203, the four-digit code Scorecard uses to group related programs).
- At least 25 graduates in the earnings sample. Smaller samples are left out because their medians swing too much and the counts carry a little privacy noise.
- A major gets a page only when at least 20 schools qualify. This one has 552.
- Ranked by median earnings 4 years after completing, highest first. Ties go to the larger sample, then to the school name.
- Schools missing earnings or a sample size are left out rather than estimated.
- What the numbers mean
- Earnings: median annual earnings of graduates four years after completing. The cohort completed in academic years 2017-18 and 2018-19 and was measured in calendar years 2022 and 2023, in 2024 dollars.
- Who is counted: graduates who received federal student aid (Title IV grants or loans), and only those who were working and not enrolled in more school that year. Graduates without federal aid, those who went on to further study and those with no earnings are not in the median.
- Scorecard adds privacy noise to counts and medians and hides values it cannot protect, so a gap of a few percent between two schools is not meaningful.
- Graduates: the number of graduates in that earnings sample. A † marks fewer than 40, where the figure is less precise.
- Debt: median federal loan debt (Stafford and Grad PLUS loans disbursed at that school) of graduates who borrowed, from the 2018-19 and 2019-20 completers. Parent PLUS and private loans are not included.
- Net price: average yearly cost after grants and scholarships for the whole institution, not this major, academic year 2023-24.
- Payback: 4 years of net price divided by how much these earnings exceed a high-school graduate’s in the school’s state. Shown only when that gap is at least $2,000, the same formula as the rest of the site.
- Source: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard field-of-study data, June 2026 release.
Top states for Accounting earnings
Median of the school medians for states with at least 3 ranked schools. The best school in each state is shown.
| State | Median earnings | Ranked schools | Top school |
|---|---|---|---|
| District of Columbia | $115,852 | 4 | Georgetown University |
| California | $87,946 | 22 | Santa Clara University |
| Massachusetts | $87,681 | 11 | Boston College |
| Rhode Island | $86,076 | 7 | Providence College |
| Utah | $85,554 | 7 | Brigham Young University |
| Connecticut | $85,136 | 10 | Fairfield University |
| New Jersey | $83,004 | 13 | The College of New Jersey |
| South Carolina | $82,151 | 6 | University of South Carolina-Columbia |
| Maryland | $81,548 | 12 | Loyola University Maryland |
| Washington | $79,113 | 8 | Seattle University |
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