Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Computer Science (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Computer Science earn a median of $107,009 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $74,830 and $152,038. We rank the 246 U.S. colleges whose Computer Science programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 23,886 graduates in all. That puts Computer Science at #3 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, among the best-paid fields.
Carnegie Mellon University, in Pennsylvania, leads at $268,121, 163% above the median ranked school ($101,960). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $90,113 and $121,651, and the lowest earns $49,084. 102 of the 246 ranked schools (41%) match or beat the national median.
Private nonprofit colleges dominate the top 20: 17 private nonprofit, 3 public and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 63% are public. California places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Massachusetts (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $20,851 a year, against $16,850 across all 246 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $15,301 in federal loans, about 8% 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 0.6 years.
Showing the top 50 of 246 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $268,121 | 121 | $21,442 | $31,944 | 0.6 |
| 2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $225,141 | 213 | $11,077 | $20,111 | 0.4 |
| 3 | Cornell University Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $223,309 | 296 | $14,750 | $28,690 | 0.6 |
| 4 | Princeton University Princeton, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $217,973 | 30 † | — | $6,128 | 0.1 |
| 5 | Stanford University Stanford, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $214,907 | 108 | $10,399 | $13,807 | 0.3 |
| 6 | Brown University Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $214,479 | 116 | $11,500 | $25,184 | 0.6 |
| 7 | Williams College Williamstown, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $209,574 | 35 † | $12,208 | $17,716 | 0.4 |
| 8 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $204,379 | 304 | $13,750 | $13,481 | 0.3 |
| 9 | Harvard University Cambridge, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $203,169 | 47 | — | $19,066 | 0.5 |
| 10 | Dartmouth College Hanover, NH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $201,702 | 62 | $18,490 | $29,519 | 0.7 |
| 11 | California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $200,511 | 25 † | — | $16,075 | 0.4 |
| 12 | Harvey Mudd College Claremont, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $198,257 | 33 † | $22,949 | $35,924 | 0.9 |
| 13 | Duke University Durham, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $195,809 | 167 | $13,500 | $29,612 | 0.7 |
| 14 | University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $192,897 | 142 | $19,625 | $32,740 | 0.8 |
| 15 | Columbia University in the City of New York New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $188,265 | 149 | $19,594 | $21,590 | 0.6 |
| 16 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $181,981 | 193 | $18,983 | $14,355 | 0.4 |
| 17 | University of Chicago Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $178,068 | 32 † | — | $14,860 | 0.4 |
| 18 | Washington University in St Louis St. Louis, MO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $177,066 | 63 | $15,250 | $21,786 | 0.6 |
| 19 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $175,616 | 280 | $15,351 | $14,091 | 0.4 |
| 20 | Colgate University Hamilton, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $161,980 | 27 † | $16,000 | $28,786 | 0.9 |
| 21 | Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $160,021 | 53 | $14,500 | $15,846 | 0.5 |
| 22 | Emory University Atlanta, GA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $159,541 | 34 † | $15,500 | $22,585 | 0.7 |
| 23 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $159,487 | 384 | $16,166 | $12,470 | 0.4 |
| 24 | Tufts University Medford, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $156,343 | 105 | $15,500 | $39,998 | 1.4 |
| 25 | University of Rochester Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $155,464 | 82 | $19,000 | $29,278 | 1.0 |
| 26 | Northwestern University Evanston, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $155,106 | 61 | $14,646 | $29,167 | 1.0 |
| 27 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $154,784 | 151 | $19,500 | $16,665 | 0.6 |
| 28 | George Washington University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $150,716 | 40 | $19,500 | $36,586 | 1.3 |
| 29 | University of San Francisco San Francisco, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $150,341 | 48 | $20,250 | $41,431 | 1.5 |
| 30 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $149,190 | 90 | $13,500 | $16,109 | 0.6 |
| 31 | University of the Pacific Stockton, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $147,511 | 46 | $23,000 | $25,447 | 0.9 |
| 32 | Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette, IN Public · 4-year | $146,685 | 210 | $19,136 | $14,600 | 0.5 |
| 33 | Georgetown University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $143,900 | 33 † | $15,750 | $40,815 | 1.6 |
| 34 | Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $143,580 | 74 | $25,391 | $41,190 | 1.5 |
| 35 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $143,204 | 61 | $18,000 | $41,704 | 1.6 |
| 36 | Brigham Young University Provo, UT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $142,800 | 134 | $12,000 | $15,564 | 0.6 |
| 37 | Lehigh University Bethlehem, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $141,691 | 71 | $23,854 | $36,931 | 1.4 |
| 38 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $141,528 | 242 | $23,233 | $36,228 | 1.4 |
| 39 | Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $138,468 | 95 | $27,000 | $41,346 | 1.6 |
| 40 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $137,931 | 228 | $19,500 | $15,678 | 0.6 |
| 41 | University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT Public · 4-year | $137,329 | 130 | $19,000 | $16,200 | 0.7 |
| 42 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year | $137,047 | 282 | $13,500 | $11,655 | 0.5 |
| 43 | Boston University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $136,667 | 151 | $23,125 | $24,402 | 1.0 |
| 44 | Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $135,702 | 155 | $27,000 | $34,906 | 1.4 |
| 45 | Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $134,208 | 166 | $27,000 | $43,071 | 1.8 |
| 46 | Baylor University Waco, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $128,411 | 42 | $27,000 | $41,104 | 1.8 |
| 47 | Seattle University Seattle, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $128,314 | 56 | $21,530 | $34,662 | 1.6 |
| 48 | William & Mary Williamsburg, VA Public · 4-year | $127,851 | 48 | $19,794 | $19,096 | 0.8 |
| 49 | California State University-Chico Chico, CA Public · 4-year | $127,498 | 60 | $20,000 | $14,480 | 0.6 |
| 50 | University of California-Irvine Irvine, CA Public · 4-year | $127,404 | 577 | $15,000 | $14,251 | 0.6 |
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 Computer Science (CIP 1107, 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 246.
- 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 Computer Science 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | $134,208 | 13 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Utah | $126,435 | 4 | Brigham Young University |
| Oregon | $121,405 | 3 | University of Portland |
| Washington | $119,686 | 7 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus |
| New Hampshire | $115,259 | 3 | Dartmouth College |
| Arizona | $114,868 | 3 | University of Arizona |
| New York | $114,571 | 18 | Cornell University |
| Colorado | $114,098 | 7 | Colorado School of Mines |
| Texas | $109,197 | 7 | Baylor University |
| Pennsylvania | $108,680 | 7 | Carnegie Mellon University |
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