Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Electrical Engineering (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering earn a median of $100,647 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $84,635 and $122,440. We rank the 201 U.S. colleges whose Electrical Engineering programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 14,722 graduates in all. That puts Electrical Engineering at #4 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, among the best-paid fields.
Carnegie Mellon University, in Pennsylvania, leads at $250,168, 152% above the median ranked school ($99,172). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $95,036 and $104,757, and the lowest earns $83,853, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 77 of the 201 ranked schools (38%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 13 public, 7 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. California places 8 schools in the top 20, ahead of Massachusetts (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $16,387 a year, against $16,665 across all 201 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $18,749 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 0.8 years.
Showing the top 50 of 201 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 | $250,168 | 113 | $22,224 | $31,944 | 0.6 |
| 2 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $200,543 | 188 | $13,674 | $13,481 | 0.3 |
| 3 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $161,118 | 109 | $10,967 | $20,111 | 0.7 |
| 4 | Cornell University Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $147,241 | 78 | $14,725 | $28,690 | 1.0 |
| 5 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $146,003 | 261 | $20,480 | $19,857 | 0.7 |
| 6 | University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $131,532 | 49 | $18,497 | $32,740 | 1.4 |
| 7 | University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $126,209 | 90 | $16,979 | $12,548 | 0.6 |
| 8 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $125,240 | 118 | $23,475 | $16,665 | 0.8 |
| 9 | University of California-Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, CA Public · 4-year | $118,290 | 56 | $16,796 | $17,890 | 0.9 |
| 10 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $118,150 | 186 | $20,000 | $12,470 | 0.6 |
| 11 | Northeastern University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $118,150 | 74 | $24,583 | $30,915 | 1.6 |
| 12 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $117,610 | 89 | $17,430 | $13,138 | 0.6 |
| 13 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $117,215 | 54 | $15,500 | $16,109 | 0.8 |
| 14 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $116,010 | 169 | $14,000 | $14,091 | 0.7 |
| 15 | Prairie View A & M University Prairie View, TX Public · 4-year | $115,939 | 28 † | $25,000 | $13,570 | 0.7 |
| 16 | University of Colorado Colorado Springs Colorado Springs, CO Public · 4-year | $113,627 | 44 | $24,500 | $15,788 | 0.9 |
| 17 | University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $112,828 | 25 † | $19,000 | $26,780 | 1.4 |
| 18 | San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA Public · 4-year | $112,454 | 50 | $16,125 | $12,278 | 0.7 |
| 19 | Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $112,047 | 45 | $26,000 | $41,346 | 2.2 |
| 20 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $111,783 | 135 | $21,500 | $14,355 | 0.8 |
| 21 | Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus Atlanta, GA Public · 4-year | $111,655 | 169 | $22,250 | $12,116 | 0.6 |
| 22 | Seattle University Seattle, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $111,410 | 38 † | $20,465 | $34,662 | 2.0 |
| 23 | University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus Denver, CO Public · 4-year | $110,754 | 44 | $29,014 | $11,900 | 0.7 |
| 24 | Kettering University Flint, MI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $109,977 | 42 | $30,000 | $34,660 | 1.8 |
| 25 | Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $109,386 | 98 | $26,887 | $43,071 | 2.5 |
| 26 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $108,296 | 230 | $23,000 | $24,406 | 1.4 |
| 27 | California State University-Fresno Fresno, CA Public · 4-year | $108,038 | 33 † | $25,875 | $7,000 | 0.4 |
| 28 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $107,834 | 103 | $21,000 | $15,678 | 0.9 |
| 29 | SUNY Maritime College Throggs Neck, NY Public · 4-year | $107,749 | 29 † | $26,000 | $22,367 | 1.2 |
| 30 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $107,543 | 128 | $20,650 | $6,541 | 0.4 |
| 31 | Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA Public · 4-year | $107,487 | 47 | $22,550 | $23,433 | 1.3 |
| 32 | University of Houston Houston, TX Public · 4-year | $107,399 | 75 | $22,625 | $14,276 | 0.8 |
| 33 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $107,348 | 52 | $24,000 | $37,050 | 2.1 |
| 34 | Western Washington University Bellingham, WA Public · 4-year | $107,131 | 27 † | $24,000 | $21,193 | 1.3 |
| 35 | Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX Public · 4-year | $107,110 | 72 | $26,000 | $19,070 | 1.1 |
| 36 | University of California-Irvine Irvine, CA Public · 4-year | $106,871 | 100 | $19,000 | $14,251 | 0.8 |
| 37 | San Diego State University San Diego, CA Public · 4-year | $106,416 | 119 | $17,999 | $15,364 | 0.9 |
| 38 | University of North Dakota Grand Forks, ND Public · 4-year | $106,162 | 48 | $27,000 | $18,551 | 1.1 |
| 39 | University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI Public · 4-year | $106,153 | 32 † | $21,500 | $21,440 | 1.3 |
| 40 | Mississippi State University Mississippi State, MS Public · 4-year | $106,039 | 64 | $25,037 | $17,595 | 0.9 |
| 41 | Colorado School of Mines Golden, CO Public · 4-year | $106,012 | 73 | $21,500 | $28,690 | 1.8 |
| 42 | University of Portland Portland, OR Private nonprofit · 4-year | $105,859 | 33 † | $20,875 | $28,210 | 1.6 |
| 43 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $105,839 | 94 | $21,000 | $16,674 | 1.0 |
| 44 | University of Michigan-Dearborn Dearborn, MI Public · 4-year | $105,446 | 100 | $20,833 | $9,492 | 0.5 |
| 45 | Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette, IN Public · 4-year | $105,396 | 98 | $17,750 | $14,600 | 0.8 |
| 46 | Oregon State University Corvallis, OR Public · 4-year | $105,359 | 125 | $22,664 | $19,604 | 1.1 |
| 47 | University of Rochester Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $105,183 | 48 | $18,175 | $29,278 | 1.7 |
| 48 | Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $105,068 | 137 | $27,000 | $34,906 | 2.0 |
| 49 | University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO Public · 4-year | $105,034 | 46 | $22,500 | $20,268 | 1.2 |
| 50 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $104,839 | 122 | $23,562 | $24,953 | 1.5 |
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 Electrical Engineering (CIP 1410, 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 201.
- 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 Electrical 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colorado | $108,383 | 4 | University of Colorado Colorado Springs |
| Washington | $107,131 | 5 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus |
| California | $106,871 | 19 | University of California-Berkeley |
| New Jersey | $106,256 | 4 | Stevens Institute of Technology |
| Arizona | $104,757 | 3 | University of Arizona |
| Oregon | $103,632 | 4 | University of Portland |
| Pennsylvania | $102,572 | 5 | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Massachusetts | $101,073 | 8 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Virginia | $100,973 | 6 | Virginia Commonwealth University |
| Michigan | $100,481 | 9 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor |
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