Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing

Highest-Paying Colleges for Experimental Psychology (Bachelor's)

Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Experimental Psychology earn a median of $55,695 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $38,073 and $76,465. We rank the 57 U.S. colleges whose Experimental Psychology programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 7,060 graduates in all. That puts Experimental Psychology at #84 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.

Columbia University in the City of New York, in New York, leads at $86,946, 58% above the median ranked school ($54,934). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $49,947 and $63,614, and the lowest earns $33,565. 26 of the 57 ranked schools (46%) match or beat the national median.

The top 20 mix sectors: 7 public, 13 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Massachusetts places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of New York (5).

The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $22,775 a year, against $17,940 across all 57 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $17,831 in federal loans, about 27% 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 3.4 years.

Showing the top 50 of 57 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.

Ranking table: Highest-Paying Colleges for Experimental Psychology (Bachelor's)

1	Columbia University in the City of New York New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year	$86,946	95	$19,347	$21,590	1.7
2	Tufts University Medford, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year	$79,571	36 †	$15,500	$39,998	4.2
3	University of Chicago Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year	$73,483	35 †	$17,500	$14,860	1.6
4	George Washington University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year	$72,325	38 †	$25,000	$36,586	4.5
5	Harvard University Cambridge, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year	$70,167	25 †	—	$19,066	2.6
6	Amherst College Amherst, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year	$69,204	28 †	$10,800	$23,367	3.3
7	Brandeis University Waltham, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year	$67,838	54	$26,787	$35,736	5.3
8	University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year	$67,537	463	$17,787	$13,138	1.6
9	University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year	$66,171	517	$14,500	$16,109	2.2
10	Northeastern University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year	$66,130	74	$23,250	$30,915	4.9
11	Barnard College New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year	$65,644	27 †	$17,875	$28,800	3.9
12	Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year	$65,095	36 †	$19,000	$39,343	5.4
13	University of Rochester Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year	$65,000	28 †	$21,000	$29,278	4.0
14	University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year	$64,904	113	$12,280	$13,481	1.9
15	University of Delaware Newark, DE Public · 4-year	$63,614	172	$23,883	$17,799	2.6
16	Brown University Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year	$63,415	27 †	$15,110	$25,184	4.4
17	New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year	$63,315	184	$20,276	$37,050	5.4
18	University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year	$63,130	58	$14,814	$12,470	1.9
19	University of Oregon Eugene, OR Public · 4-year	$62,255	39 †	—	$22,182	3.5
20	University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year	$61,134	165	$16,570	$12,548	2.1
21	University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year	$60,168	384	$19,385	$14,355	2.4
22	Emmanuel College Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year	$60,022	36 †	$25,489	$26,706	5.6
23	Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year	$59,913	25 †	—	$24,406	4.3
24	University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year	$57,718	182	$15,379	$14,091	3.3
25	University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year	$57,378	653	$12,866	$14,741	2.9
26	Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL Public · 4-year	$56,012	44	$17,695	$8,752	1.6
27	Boston University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year	$55,066	34 †	—	$24,402	7.0
28	Eastern Washington University Cheney, WA Public · 4-year	$54,974	73	$19,134	$13,886	3.9
29	Trinity Washington University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year	$54,934	79	$37,011	$9,302	2.5
30	Park University Parkville, MO Private nonprofit · 4-year	$54,849	254	$22,077	$21,032	4.2
31	Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA Public · 4-year	$54,441	90	$22,675	$20,686	4.0
32	University of California-Irvine Irvine, CA Public · 4-year	$54,323	495	$13,000	$14,251	3.3
33	Utica University Utica, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year	$53,457	42	$23,250	$19,108	4.3
34	Kansas State University Manhattan, KS Public · 4-year	$53,337	91	$19,875	$19,406	4.2
35	Wellesley College Wellesley, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year	$52,538	29 †	$11,782	$25,496	8.9
36	Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette, IN Public · 4-year	$52,170	126	$18,500	$14,600	3.7
37	Colorado Christian University Lakewood, CO Private nonprofit · 4-year	$52,153	32 †	$18,125	$29,500	10.3
38	Canisius University Buffalo, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year	$51,532	90	$24,775	$17,940	4.5
39	Smith College Northampton, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year	$51,267	51	$18,114	$27,579	10.8
40	University of South Carolina-Columbia Columbia, SC Public · 4-year	$51,090	258	$21,500	$22,811	5.6
41	The University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, TX Public · 4-year	$50,248	168	$17,250	$18,267	4.7
42	University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year	$50,098	89	$19,428	$16,778	5.5
43	University of California-Riverside Riverside, CA Public · 4-year	$49,947	364	$17,746	$14,304	4.4
44	Northwest Missouri State University Maryville, MO Public · 4-year	$49,872	59	$24,436	$16,244	4.3
45	Metropolitan State University of Denver Denver, CO Public · 4-year	$48,655	63	$20,511	$15,327	7.7
46	Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year	$48,348	73	$25,375	$32,875	11.1
47	University of North Georgia Dahlonega, GA Public · 4-year	$47,919	160	$21,000	$9,823	2.8
48	California State University-San Bernardino San Bernardino, CA Public · 4-year	$47,408	51	$18,125	$4,564	1.8
49	University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO Public · 4-year	$47,390	89	$19,294	$14,462	4.6
50	Northeastern State University Tahlequah, OK Public · 4-year	$46,102	110	$18,579	$12,710	4.5

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 Experimental Psychology (CIP 4227, 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 57.
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.

Read the full methodology

Top states for Experimental Psychology earnings

Median of the school medians for states with at least 3 ranked schools. The best school in each state is shown.

Median graduate earnings by state for Experimental Psychology
State	Median earnings	Ranked schools	Top school
Massachusetts	$66,130	9	Tufts University
New York	$65,000	7	Columbia University in the City of New York
California	$59,256	8	University of California-Santa Barbara
Missouri	$48,631	4	Park University

Other fields to compare, by what graduates earn.

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Highest-Paying Colleges for Experimental Psychology (Bachelor's)

How this ranking is built

Top states for Experimental Psychology earnings

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