Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Management Science (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Management Science earn a median of $86,176 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $61,755 and $114,719. We rank the 84 U.S. colleges whose Management Science programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 6,855 graduates in all. That puts Management Science at #19 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, among the best-paid fields.
New York University, in New York, leads at $158,559, 77% above the median ranked school ($89,519). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $73,935 and $104,108, and the lowest earns $53,029. 44 of the 84 ranked schools (52%) match or beat the national median.
The top 20 mix sectors: 9 public, 11 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Pennsylvania places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Massachusetts (2).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $27,589 a year, against $19,539 across all 84 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $20,500 in federal loans, about 19% 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 1.3 years.
Showing the top 50 of 84 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $158,559 | 98 | $17,250 | $37,050 | 1.2 |
| 2 | University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $153,279 | 25 † | $15,750 | $28,699 | 1.0 |
| 3 | University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA Public · 4-year | $139,095 | 87 | $18,286 | $21,565 | 0.8 |
| 4 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $126,906 | 93 | $21,500 | $24,406 | 1.1 |
| 5 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $126,475 | 70 | $18,000 | $41,704 | 2.0 |
| 6 | University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $124,557 | 26 † | $19,000 | $26,780 | 1.2 |
| 7 | Texas Christian University Fort Worth, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $114,822 | 31 † | — | $36,660 | 1.8 |
| 8 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $111,649 | 51 | $14,943 | $15,678 | 0.8 |
| 9 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $111,500 | 73 | $20,500 | $17,339 | 0.9 |
| 10 | Bentley University Waltham, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $111,433 | 46 | $25,000 | $37,930 | 2.2 |
| 11 | Villanova University Villanova, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $109,642 | 68 | $27,000 | $43,756 | 2.4 |
| 12 | St. John's University-New York Queens, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $109,396 | 27 † | $19,500 | $29,999 | 1.6 |
| 13 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $109,220 | 83 | $18,625 | $6,541 | 0.3 |
| 14 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $108,726 | 346 | $21,500 | $24,953 | 1.4 |
| 15 | University of St Thomas (MN) Saint Paul, MN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $108,187 | 30 † | $18,500 | $29,155 | 1.7 |
| 16 | University of Kansas Lawrence, KS Public · 4-year | $107,635 | 34 † | $23,250 | $18,059 | 1.0 |
| 17 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $106,521 | 66 | $22,250 | $17,354 | 1.0 |
| 18 | Lebanon Valley College Annville, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $105,444 | 26 † | $27,000 | $26,979 | 1.6 |
| 19 | Drexel University Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $104,599 | 117 | $28,233 | $38,509 | 2.3 |
| 20 | Temple University Philadelphia, PA Public · 4-year | $104,311 | 72 | $24,187 | $28,198 | 1.7 |
| 21 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $104,172 | 55 | $20,500 | $14,355 | 0.8 |
| 22 | University of Denver Denver, CO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $104,087 | 38 † | $21,500 | $36,131 | 2.3 |
| 23 | University of Rochester Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $102,625 | 32 † | $21,625 | $29,278 | 1.8 |
| 24 | Miami University-Oxford Oxford, OH Public · 4-year | $102,249 | 58 | $27,000 | $28,384 | 1.7 |
| 25 | University of South Carolina-Columbia Columbia, SC Public · 4-year | $98,020 | 268 | $22,497 | $22,811 | 1.4 |
| 26 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $97,236 | 40 | $22,872 | $19,680 | 1.3 |
| 27 | Drake University Des Moines, IA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $97,132 | 59 | $23,979 | $29,127 | 1.9 |
| 28 | George Mason University Fairfax, VA Public · 4-year | $97,049 | 348 | $17,250 | $17,915 | 1.2 |
| 29 | Saint Joseph's University - Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $96,930 | 112 | $26,000 | $29,689 | 2.0 |
| 30 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $96,430 | 120 | $17,500 | $14,967 | 1.0 |
| 31 | University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE Public · 4-year | $96,087 | 51 | $24,000 | $17,747 | 1.2 |
| 32 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $96,078 | 56 | $11,128 | $16,109 | 1.1 |
| 33 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $95,193 | 30 † | — | $14,091 | 1.0 |
| 34 | Southern New Hampshire University Manchester, NH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $94,942 | 81 | $25,079 | $36,708 | 2.8 |
| 35 | Florida State University Tallahassee, FL Public · 4-year | $94,887 | 72 | $18,522 | $11,297 | 0.7 |
| 36 | CUNY Bernard M Baruch College New York, NY Public · 4-year | $94,582 | 102 | $7,500 | $3,033 | 0.2 |
| 37 | Purdue University-Main Campus West Lafayette, IN Public · 4-year | $93,976 | 72 | $18,578 | $14,600 | 1.0 |
| 38 | The University of Tennessee-Knoxville Knoxville, TN Public · 4-year | $92,042 | 111 | $24,812 | $18,976 | 1.3 |
| 39 | University of Iowa Iowa City, IA Public · 4-year | $91,720 | 113 | $20,500 | $22,531 | 1.7 |
| 40 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $91,446 | 74 | $23,250 | $25,097 | 1.9 |
| 41 | University of Missouri-St Louis Saint Louis, MO Public · 4-year | $89,660 | 83 | $20,500 | $15,071 | 1.1 |
| 42 | Georgia State University Atlanta, GA Public · 4-year | $89,587 | 56 | $23,029 | $15,931 | 1.1 |
| 43 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $89,451 | 121 | $15,127 | $12,470 | 1.0 |
| 44 | University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR Public · 4-year | $88,067 | 61 | $22,500 | $18,209 | 1.3 |
| 45 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $86,155 | 157 | $12,000 | $14,741 | 1.2 |
| 46 | Benedictine University Lisle, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $85,904 | 31 † | $25,000 | $22,313 | 1.8 |
| 47 | The University of Texas at Dallas Richardson, TX Public · 4-year | $85,717 | 92 | $17,048 | $18,267 | 1.4 |
| 48 | Creighton University Omaha, NE Private nonprofit · 4-year | $85,268 | 35 † | $24,951 | $31,568 | 2.6 |
| 49 | University of Portland Portland, OR Private nonprofit · 4-year | $84,313 | 43 | $24,000 | $28,210 | 2.4 |
| 50 | California State University-Fullerton Fullerton, CA Public · 4-year | $83,878 | 47 | $12,375 | $6,555 | 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 Management Science (CIP 5213, 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 84.
- 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 Management 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 | $111,433 | 3 | Boston College |
| Virginia | $108,726 | 3 | University of Virginia-Main Campus |
| Pennsylvania | $104,455 | 8 | University of Pennsylvania |
| Ohio | $102,249 | 3 | Ohio State University-Main Campus |
| New York | $98,604 | 6 | New York University |
| Indiana | $93,976 | 3 | University of Notre Dame |
| Iowa | $91,720 | 3 | Drake University |
| California | $86,155 | 5 | University of California-Santa Barbara |
| Texas | $78,996 | 5 | Texas Christian University |
| Michigan | $77,768 | 3 | Michigan State University |
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