Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Applied Mathematics (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics earn a median of $91,532 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $63,368 and $127,252. We rank the 27 U.S. colleges whose Applied Mathematics programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,596 graduates in all. That puts Applied Mathematics at #14 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, among the best-paid fields.
Brown University, in Rhode Island, leads at $157,822, 70% above the median ranked school ($92,803). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $76,340 and $106,907, and the lowest earns $65,508. 14 of the 27 ranked schools (52%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 13 public, 7 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. California places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of New York (2).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $23,978 a year, against $18,784 across all 27 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $19,719 in federal loans, about 19% 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 1.4 years.
Showing the top 27 of 27 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Brown University Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $157,822 | 50 | $10,000 | $25,184 | 0.9 |
| 2 | Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $156,419 | 39 † | $25,841 | $41,346 | 1.4 |
| 3 | Northwestern University Evanston, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $148,740 | 28 † | — | $29,167 | 1.0 |
| 4 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year | $119,839 | 105 | $14,135 | $11,655 | 0.5 |
| 5 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $118,414 | 150 | $14,500 | $13,481 | 0.7 |
| 6 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $117,990 | 65 | $20,000 | $24,953 | 1.2 |
| 7 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $109,360 | 54 | $17,000 | $16,109 | 0.9 |
| 8 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $104,454 | 49 | $23,495 | $25,097 | 1.5 |
| 9 | University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $103,887 | 152 | $14,400 | $12,548 | 0.8 |
| 10 | University at Albany Albany, NY Public · 4-year | $103,659 | 39 † | $19,719 | $17,167 | 1.0 |
| 11 | University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $101,094 | 63 | $12,251 | $32,740 | 2.0 |
| 12 | Colorado School of Mines Golden, CO Public · 4-year | $98,190 | 30 † | $21,500 | $28,690 | 2.0 |
| 13 | University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus Pittsburgh, PA Public · 4-year | $95,719 | 79 | $21,500 | $30,434 | 2.1 |
| 14 | University of Wisconsin-Stout Menomonie, WI Public · 4-year | $92,803 | 47 | $20,520 | $17,490 | 1.3 |
| 15 | Bryant University Smithfield, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $86,595 | 63 | $26,000 | $41,219 | 3.6 |
| 16 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $85,792 | 70 | $16,032 | $21,315 | 1.7 |
| 17 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $85,233 | 61 | $15,249 | $12,470 | 1.0 |
| 18 | Stony Brook University Stony Brook, NY Public · 4-year | $82,200 | 144 | $19,000 | $18,784 | 1.6 |
| 19 | University of Portland Portland, OR Private nonprofit · 4-year | $77,908 | 32 † | $20,810 | $28,210 | 2.8 |
| 20 | Robert Morris University Moon Township, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $76,610 | 57 | $24,250 | $23,003 | 2.3 |
| 21 | Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $76,069 | 29 † | $27,000 | $34,906 | 3.5 |
| 22 | Texas State University San Marcos, TX Public · 4-year | $72,464 | 38 † | $24,366 | $16,805 | 1.8 |
| 23 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $71,317 | 32 † | $17,268 | $14,967 | 1.7 |
| 24 | Washington State University Pullman, WA Public · 4-year | $70,085 | 27 † | $16,139 | $14,971 | 2.0 |
| 25 | San Diego State University San Diego, CA Public · 4-year | $69,606 | 33 † | $23,793 | $15,364 | 1.9 |
| 26 | CUNY City College New York, NY Public · 4-year | $66,754 | 30 † | — | $3,776 | 0.5 |
| 27 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $65,508 | 30 † | $13,000 | $14,741 | 2.1 |
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 Applied Mathematics (CIP 2703, 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 27.
- 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 Applied Mathematics 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | $101,094 | 7 | University of California-Berkeley |
| New York | $79,135 | 4 | University at Albany |
Related majors
Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
-
Mathematics (Bachelor's)
$69,562 national median · 181 schools
-
Statistics (Bachelor's)
$92,425 national median · 30 schools
-
Mechanical Engineering (Bachelor's)
$92,135 national median · 271 schools
-
Computer and Information Sciences (Bachelor's)
$92,374 national median · 303 schools
-
Engineering-Related Fields (Bachelor's)
$89,619 national median · 21 schools
-
Biomedical Engineering (Bachelor's)
$93,451 national median · 91 schools
-
Engineering (General) (Bachelor's)
$89,359 national median · 46 schools
-
Construction Engineering Technology (Bachelor's)
$93,843 national median · 33 schools
All majors College rankings How to read Scorecard earnings data Community college vs. four-year college