Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Mathematics (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Mathematics earn a median of $69,562 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $49,058 and $97,414. We rank the 181 U.S. colleges whose Mathematics programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 8,959 graduates in all. That puts Mathematics at #40 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Massachusetts, leads at $174,951, 146% above the median ranked school ($71,223). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $62,943 and $82,450, and the lowest earns $44,407. 99 of the 181 ranked schools (55%) match or beat the national median.
Private nonprofit colleges dominate the top 20: 16 private nonprofit, 4 public and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 84% are public. Massachusetts places 5 schools in the top 20, ahead of Illinois (2).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $26,029 a year, against $16,805 across all 181 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $15,064 in federal loans, about 13% 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 1.1 years.
Showing the top 50 of 181 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $174,951 | 46 | $9,751 | $20,111 | 0.6 |
| 2 | University of Chicago Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $172,826 | 44 | $12,000 | $14,860 | 0.4 |
| 3 | Dartmouth College Hanover, NH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $168,580 | 27 † | $11,617 | $29,519 | 0.9 |
| 4 | Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $141,171 | 47 | $9,644 | $15,846 | 0.6 |
| 5 | Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD Private nonprofit · 4-year | $134,785 | 44 | $10,859 | $18,809 | 0.8 |
| 6 | Cornell University Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $134,455 | 31 † | $13,500 | $28,690 | 1.2 |
| 7 | Williams College Williamstown, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $134,304 | 28 † | $13,807 | $17,716 | 0.8 |
| 8 | Georgetown University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $127,760 | 29 † | $17,500 | $40,815 | 1.9 |
| 9 | Northeastern University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $125,084 | 46 | $21,750 | $30,915 | 1.5 |
| 10 | Amherst College Amherst, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $124,324 | 32 † | $13,900 | $23,367 | 1.1 |
| 11 | Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Terre Haute, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $112,187 | 27 † | $25,000 | $42,513 | 2.2 |
| 12 | Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX Private nonprofit · 4-year | $111,773 | 29 † | $20,000 | $40,892 | 2.1 |
| 13 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $111,072 | 53 | $18,000 | $41,704 | 2.4 |
| 14 | Villanova University Villanova, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $109,851 | 56 | $25,000 | $43,756 | 2.4 |
| 15 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $109,146 | 85 | $20,675 | $13,138 | 0.7 |
| 16 | Northwestern University Evanston, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $107,072 | 31 † | $12,418 | $29,167 | 1.6 |
| 17 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $105,768 | 35 † | $23,250 | $36,228 | 2.1 |
| 18 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year | $101,599 | 69 | $15,127 | $11,655 | 0.7 |
| 19 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $101,438 | 92 | $20,080 | $17,354 | 1.1 |
| 20 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $100,127 | 58 | $15,000 | $14,091 | 0.9 |
| 21 | University of Maryland-College Park College Park, MD Public · 4-year | $99,689 | 86 | $19,500 | $15,678 | 1.0 |
| 22 | University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $99,269 | 69 | $14,920 | $12,548 | 0.8 |
| 23 | Washington University in St Louis St. Louis, MO Private nonprofit · 4-year | $98,497 | 27 † | $18,700 | $21,786 | 1.4 |
| 24 | College of the Holy Cross Worcester, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $96,927 | 52 | $27,000 | $38,782 | 2.8 |
| 25 | New Jersey Institute of Technology Newark, NJ Public · 4-year | $94,840 | 37 † | $24,500 | $16,504 | 1.1 |
| 26 | University of Rochester Rochester, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $94,178 | 25 † | $22,000 | $29,278 | 2.0 |
| 27 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $93,022 | 59 | $16,111 | $6,541 | 0.4 |
| 28 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $92,594 | 33 † | $19,949 | $17,303 | 1.2 |
| 29 | Macalester College Saint Paul, MN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $91,979 | 37 † | $23,745 | $32,149 | 2.4 |
| 30 | The College of New Jersey Ewing, NJ Public · 4-year | $91,736 | 38 † | $26,000 | $27,646 | 2.0 |
| 31 | University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA Public · 4-year | $91,236 | 46 | $17,468 | $21,565 | 1.6 |
| 32 | University of Colorado Boulder Boulder, CO Public · 4-year | $90,635 | 30 † | $19,258 | $25,346 | 2.0 |
| 33 | DePaul University Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $89,908 | 48 | $24,846 | $30,902 | 2.3 |
| 34 | Indiana University-Bloomington Bloomington, IN Public · 4-year | $89,112 | 28 † | $20,750 | $16,264 | 1.2 |
| 35 | University of Maryland-Baltimore County Baltimore, MD Public · 4-year | $88,967 | 63 | $16,500 | $16,467 | 1.3 |
| 36 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $88,434 | 201 | $19,500 | $19,857 | 1.5 |
| 37 | St Olaf College Northfield, MN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $87,691 | 54 | $23,000 | $23,874 | 1.9 |
| 38 | CUNY Bernard M Baruch College New York, NY Public · 4-year | $85,820 | 36 † | — | $3,033 | 0.2 |
| 39 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $85,391 | 93 | $17,000 | $16,109 | 1.3 |
| 40 | Boston University Boston, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $84,784 | 41 | $19,250 | $24,402 | 2.2 |
| 41 | University of Massachusetts-Amherst Amherst, MA Public · 4-year | $83,338 | 76 | $21,000 | $22,383 | 2.1 |
| 42 | Hamilton College Clinton, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $83,211 | 26 † | $16,275 | $28,985 | 2.4 |
| 43 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $83,187 | 39 † | $16,636 | $16,665 | 1.4 |
| 44 | University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Eau Claire, WI Public · 4-year | $83,027 | 70 | $23,625 | $16,550 | 1.5 |
| 45 | Binghamton University Vestal, NY Public · 4-year | $82,492 | 110 | $19,250 | $21,620 | 1.8 |
| 46 | Clemson University Clemson, SC Public · 4-year | $82,450 | 56 | $22,500 | $22,253 | 1.9 |
| 47 | University of Iowa Iowa City, IA Public · 4-year | $82,411 | 52 | $21,000 | $22,531 | 2.0 |
| 48 | University of Oregon Eugene, OR Public · 4-year | $82,191 | 40 | $15,475 | $22,182 | 2.0 |
| 49 | Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $81,941 | 28 † | $27,000 | $38,793 | 3.4 |
| 50 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $81,909 | 92 | $19,481 | $17,339 | 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 Mathematics (CIP 2701, 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 181.
- 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 Mathematics 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 | $104,000 | 10 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Maryland | $94,328 | 4 | Johns Hopkins University |
| Minnesota | $84,778 | 4 | Macalester College |
| Illinois | $84,400 | 6 | University of Chicago |
| Missouri | $81,518 | 3 | Washington University in St Louis |
| New York | $80,308 | 15 | Cornell University |
| Ohio | $76,336 | 5 | Ohio State University-Main Campus |
| Washington | $74,280 | 4 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus |
| Michigan | $72,749 | 4 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor |
| Oregon | $72,318 | 3 | University of Oregon |
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