Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Engineering (General) (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Engineering (General) earn a median of $89,359 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $73,449 and $108,835. We rank the 46 U.S. colleges whose Engineering (General) programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 2,729 graduates in all. That puts Engineering (General) at #16 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, among the best-paid fields.
Franklin W Olin College of Engineering, in Massachusetts, leads at $135,136, 53% above the median ranked school ($88,084). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $84,297 and $98,336, and the lowest earns $72,716, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 20 of the 46 ranked schools (43%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 10 public, 10 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. The top 20 are spread across 16 states, with California the most common (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $22,444 a year, against $22,998 across all 46 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $24,375 in federal loans, about 24% 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 46 of 46 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Franklin W Olin College of Engineering Needham, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $135,136 | 30 † | $14,512 | $25,171 | 1.1 |
| 2 | Harvey Mudd College Claremont, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $122,845 | 60 | $22,240 | $35,924 | 1.7 |
| 3 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $114,228 | 114 | $14,939 | $14,741 | 0.8 |
| 4 | Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $110,208 | 26 † | — | $31,944 | 1.7 |
| 5 | Brown University Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $108,550 | 59 | $15,000 | $25,184 | 1.5 |
| 6 | McNeese State University Lake Charles, LA Public · 4-year | $107,319 | 92 | $25,554 | $12,493 | 0.7 |
| 7 | Seattle Pacific University Seattle, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $106,291 | 26 † | $27,000 | $24,488 | 1.5 |
| 8 | Lafayette College Easton, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $104,222 | 25 † | — | $34,433 | 2.0 |
| 9 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $102,301 | 128 | $22,250 | $19,680 | 1.2 |
| 10 | University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA Public · 4-year | $101,078 | 26 † | — | $21,565 | 1.3 |
| 11 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $99,838 | 35 † | — | $17,303 | 1.1 |
| 12 | Frostburg State University Frostburg, MD Public · 4-year | $99,671 | 47 | $18,500 | $16,715 | 1.1 |
| 13 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $94,332 | 219 | $25,500 | $14,967 | 1.0 |
| 14 | Texas Christian University Fort Worth, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $93,753 | 43 | $22,944 | $36,660 | 2.5 |
| 15 | University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO Public · 4-year | $92,426 | 28 † | $24,375 | $20,268 | 1.4 |
| 16 | James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA Public · 4-year | $91,761 | 61 | $24,750 | $23,322 | 1.7 |
| 17 | University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville, AL Public · 4-year | $91,645 | 28 † | — | $18,796 | 1.3 |
| 18 | Walla Walla University College Place, WA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $91,473 | 50 | $27,000 | $23,329 | 1.8 |
| 19 | George Fox University Newberg, OR Private nonprofit · 4-year | $91,427 | 83 | $27,000 | $31,679 | 2.3 |
| 20 | John Brown University Siloam Springs, AR Private nonprofit · 4-year | $90,783 | 29 † | $25,488 | $20,397 | 1.4 |
| 21 | Mercer University Macon, GA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $88,413 | 144 | $25,350 | $23,847 | 1.7 |
| 22 | University of North Carolina Asheville Asheville, NC Public · 4-year | $88,346 | 33 † | $30,513 | $12,250 | 0.9 |
| 23 | Elizabethtown College Elizabethtown, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $88,104 | 37 † | $26,788 | $26,598 | 2.1 |
| 24 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $88,063 | 27 † | $25,949 | $32,875 | 2.6 |
| 25 | Stony Brook University Stony Brook, NY Public · 4-year | $87,517 | 30 † | $20,000 | $18,784 | 1.5 |
| 26 | The University of Tennessee-Martin Martin, TN Public · 4-year | $87,043 | 37 † | $29,750 | $10,701 | 0.8 |
| 27 | Loyola University Maryland Baltimore, MD Private nonprofit · 4-year | $86,585 | 40 | $27,000 | $30,574 | 2.5 |
| 28 | Robert Morris University Moon Township, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $86,444 | 123 | $24,269 | $23,003 | 1.8 |
| 29 | Smith College Northampton, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $86,262 | 27 † | $19,000 | $27,579 | 2.4 |
| 30 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $86,148 | 112 | $21,399 | $16,778 | 1.4 |
| 31 | Northwest Nazarene University Nampa, ID Private nonprofit · 4-year | $85,643 | 26 † | — | $29,580 | 2.4 |
| 32 | Messiah University Mechanicsburg, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $84,927 | 76 | $24,750 | $26,502 | 2.2 |
| 33 | East Carolina University Greenville, NC Public · 4-year | $84,847 | 156 | $24,342 | $15,739 | 1.2 |
| 34 | Oral Roberts University Tulsa, OK Private nonprofit · 4-year | $84,649 | 37 † | $26,917 | $25,365 | 2.0 |
| 35 | Saint Vincent College Latrobe, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $84,180 | 33 † | $21,500 | $23,510 | 2.0 |
| 36 | Minnesota State University-Mankato Mankato, MN Public · 4-year | $82,903 | 43 | $13,936 | $19,139 | 1.7 |
| 37 | Olivet Nazarene University Bourbonnais, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $82,632 | 82 | $27,000 | $20,729 | 1.8 |
| 38 | Hope College Holland, MI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $82,513 | 60 | $27,000 | $27,182 | 2.3 |
| 39 | Western Carolina University Cullowhee, NC Public · 4-year | $82,500 | 36 † | $25,550 | $13,315 | 1.1 |
| 40 | Calvin University Grand Rapids, MI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $82,326 | 104 | $22,409 | $22,992 | 1.9 |
| 41 | University of Hartford West Hartford, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $78,351 | 27 † | $27,000 | $30,282 | 3.0 |
| 42 | Fort Lewis College Durango, CO Public · 4-year | $77,389 | 36 † | $25,397 | $17,296 | 1.9 |
| 43 | Geneva College Beaver Falls, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $75,535 | 83 | $26,997 | $25,890 | 2.7 |
| 44 | SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry Syracuse, NY Public · 4-year | $74,307 | 43 | — | $18,952 | 2.0 |
| 45 | Marshall University Huntington, WV Public · 4-year | $72,922 | 43 | $26,500 | $7,502 | 0.8 |
| 46 | College of Staten Island CUNY Staten Island, NY Public · 4-year | $72,716 | 25 † | — | $5,579 | 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 Engineering (General) (CIP 1401, 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 46.
- 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 Engineering (General) 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | $87,254 | 8 | Carnegie Mellon University |
| North Carolina | $86,597 | 4 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh |
| Michigan | $82,513 | 3 | Michigan State University |
| New York | $74,307 | 3 | Stony Brook University |
Related majors
Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.
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Engineering (General) (Associate)
Same major, Associate level
$72,916 national median · 22 schools
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Mechanical Engineering (Bachelor's)
$92,135 national median · 271 schools
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Electrical Engineering (Bachelor's)
$100,647 national median · 201 schools
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Civil Engineering (Bachelor's)
$86,517 national median · 190 schools
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Chemical Engineering (Bachelor's)
$98,158 national median · 131 schools
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Computer Engineering (Bachelor's)
$109,015 national median · 131 schools
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Biomedical Engineering (Bachelor's)
$93,451 national median · 91 schools
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Industrial Engineering (Bachelor's)
$98,442 national median · 64 schools
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