Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Chemical Engineering (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering earn a median of $98,158 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $80,300 and $117,974. We rank the 131 U.S. colleges whose Chemical Engineering programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 9,516 graduates in all. That puts Chemical Engineering at #7 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, among the best-paid fields.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Massachusetts, leads at $122,093, 26% above the median ranked school ($97,184). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $92,557 and $102,134, and the lowest earns $81,185, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 55 of the 131 ranked schools (42%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 13 public, 7 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Texas places 4 schools in the top 20, ahead of California (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $19,984 a year, against $18,551 across all 131 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $18,086 in federal loans, about 16% 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 1.0 years.
Showing the top 50 of 131 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $122,093 | 27 † | $17,000 | $20,111 | 1.0 |
| 2 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $121,027 | 51 | $18,155 | $13,481 | 0.6 |
| 3 | Cornell University Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $116,165 | 82 | $14,361 | $28,690 | 1.4 |
| 4 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $115,423 | 101 | $19,672 | $19,857 | 1.0 |
| 5 | Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Baton Rouge, LA Public · 4-year | $114,226 | 113 | $20,500 | $19,151 | 1.0 |
| 6 | University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $113,614 | 90 | $16,750 | $26,780 | 1.4 |
| 7 | Rice University Houston, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $113,605 | 44 | $13,178 | $13,370 | 0.7 |
| 8 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $113,317 | 35 † | $14,937 | $16,109 | 0.8 |
| 9 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $111,073 | 139 | $18,017 | $21,315 | 1.1 |
| 10 | Northwestern University Evanston, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $111,040 | 25 † | $16,500 | $29,167 | 1.6 |
| 11 | Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $110,378 | 57 | $23,125 | $31,944 | 1.7 |
| 12 | University of Houston Houston, TX Public · 4-year | $110,184 | 70 | $19,228 | $14,276 | 0.8 |
| 13 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $109,607 | 114 | $19,600 | $6,541 | 0.3 |
| 14 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $109,551 | 50 | $17,054 | $14,091 | 0.8 |
| 15 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $109,405 | 133 | $20,964 | $13,138 | 0.7 |
| 16 | University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $108,066 | 56 | $17,000 | $12,548 | 0.7 |
| 17 | Northeastern University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $107,767 | 132 | $26,623 | $30,915 | 1.9 |
| 18 | Auburn University Auburn, AL Public · 4-year | $106,726 | 42 | $22,604 | $24,323 | 1.3 |
| 19 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $106,011 | 80 | $24,875 | $24,953 | 1.4 |
| 20 | University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA Public · 4-year | $105,724 | 36 † | $17,733 | $21,565 | 1.2 |
| 21 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $104,705 | 117 | $21,155 | $17,303 | 1.0 |
| 22 | Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette, IN Public · 4-year | $104,514 | 113 | $21,500 | $14,600 | 0.9 |
| 23 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $104,317 | 135 | $21,470 | $14,355 | 0.8 |
| 24 | Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus Atlanta, GA Public · 4-year | $104,104 | 168 | $26,250 | $12,116 | 0.7 |
| 25 | University of Delaware Newark, DE Public · 4-year | $103,910 | 101 | $26,000 | $17,799 | 1.1 |
| 26 | Kettering University Flint, MI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $103,868 | 30 † | $29,000 | $34,660 | 2.0 |
| 27 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $103,728 | 200 | $26,706 | $32,875 | 2.0 |
| 28 | Villanova University Villanova, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $103,601 | 71 | $27,000 | $43,756 | 2.6 |
| 29 | University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI Public · 4-year | $103,525 | 41 | $26,816 | $21,440 | 1.4 |
| 30 | California State Polytechnic University-Pomona Pomona, CA Public · 4-year | $102,849 | 95 | $21,322 | $11,531 | 0.7 |
| 31 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $102,649 | 124 | $15,750 | $14,741 | 0.9 |
| 32 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $102,223 | 154 | $25,314 | $19,680 | 1.2 |
| 33 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $102,149 | 74 | $22,281 | $15,678 | 1.0 |
| 34 | University of Louisiana at Lafayette Lafayette, LA Public · 4-year | $102,119 | 50 | $20,927 | $13,530 | 0.8 |
| 35 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $101,815 | 51 | $21,000 | $16,674 | 1.0 |
| 36 | Brigham Young University Provo, UT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $101,726 | 90 | $14,680 | $15,564 | 1.0 |
| 37 | Lehigh University Bethlehem, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $101,720 | 51 | $27,000 | $36,931 | 2.3 |
| 38 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $101,676 | 66 | $21,638 | $17,354 | 1.1 |
| 39 | University of Louisville Louisville, KY Public · 4-year | $101,068 | 61 | $20,500 | $17,988 | 1.1 |
| 40 | Lamar University Beaumont, TX Public · 4-year | $101,018 | 59 | $19,500 | $9,366 | 0.6 |
| 41 | The University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, AL Public · 4-year | $100,857 | 118 | $22,625 | $22,420 | 1.3 |
| 42 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $100,729 | 91 | $21,500 | $24,406 | 1.5 |
| 43 | University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $100,646 | 41 | $13,000 | $32,740 | 2.1 |
| 44 | Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $100,199 | 86 | $27,000 | $43,071 | 2.9 |
| 45 | The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $100,191 | 31 † | — | $13,269 | 0.8 |
| 46 | Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX Public · 4-year | $99,747 | 81 | $27,232 | $19,070 | 1.2 |
| 47 | Washington State University Pullman, WA Public · 4-year | $99,506 | 50 | $22,500 | $14,971 | 1.0 |
| 48 | Drexel University Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $99,338 | 105 | $29,833 | $38,509 | 2.5 |
| 49 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $98,851 | 167 | $20,780 | $17,339 | 1.1 |
| 50 | Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $98,782 | 79 | $26,686 | $41,346 | 2.7 |
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 Chemical Engineering (CIP 1407, 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 131.
- 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 Chemical Engineering 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virginia | $105,724 | 3 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University |
| Texas | $105,601 | 8 | The University of Texas at Austin |
| Indiana | $104,514 | 3 | University of Notre Dame |
| Pennsylvania | $101,720 | 7 | Carnegie Mellon University |
| California | $101,648 | 10 | University of California-Berkeley |
| Alabama | $100,857 | 3 | Auburn University |
| Massachusetts | $100,199 | 5 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Michigan | $98,351 | 6 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor |
| New Jersey | $98,077 | 4 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick |
| Illinois | $95,862 | 4 | Northwestern University |
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