Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Microbiology and Immunology (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Microbiology and Immunology earn a median of $62,582 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $44,047 and $83,205. We rank the 33 U.S. colleges whose Microbiology and Immunology programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,254 graduates in all. That puts Microbiology and Immunology at #55 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
University of California-Santa Barbara, in California, leads at $90,061, 37% above the median ranked school ($65,502). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $59,979 and $69,269, and the lowest earns $46,726, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 22 of the 33 ranked schools (67%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 19 public, 1 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 97% are public. California places 7 schools in the top 20, ahead of Texas (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $16,018 a year, against $15,927 across all 33 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $20,500 in federal loans, about 30% 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 2.1 years.
Showing the top 33 of 33 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $90,061 | 29 † | $16,500 | $16,109 | 1.2 |
| 2 | San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA Public · 4-year | $85,037 | 36 † | $24,186 | $12,278 | 1.0 |
| 3 | Clemson University Clemson, SC Public · 4-year | $81,526 | 27 † | $23,884 | $22,253 | 1.9 |
| 4 | California State University-Chico Chico, CA Public · 4-year | $74,888 | 32 † | $23,500 | $14,480 | 1.5 |
| 5 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $74,343 | 55 | $11,000 | $14,741 | 1.6 |
| 6 | California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA Public · 4-year | $73,988 | 25 † | — | $10,440 | 1.1 |
| 7 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $73,944 | 29 † | $13,849 | $14,091 | 1.7 |
| 8 | Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX Public · 4-year | $69,628 | 30 † | $21,198 | $19,070 | 2.2 |
| 9 | Colorado State University-Fort Collins Fort Collins, CO Public · 4-year | $69,269 | 53 | $20,500 | $21,279 | 3.0 |
| 10 | Weber State University Ogden, UT Public · 4-year | $68,597 | 32 † | $18,982 | $10,258 | 1.4 |
| 11 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $68,398 | 27 † | $23,685 | $16,778 | 2.2 |
| 12 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $68,397 | 50 | $21,500 | $17,354 | 2.3 |
| 13 | University of Massachusetts-Amherst Amherst, MA Public · 4-year | $66,642 | 30 † | $23,750 | $22,383 | 3.5 |
| 14 | Brigham Young University Provo, UT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $66,603 | 35 † | $11,087 | $15,564 | 2.2 |
| 15 | University of Nevada-Reno Reno, NV Public · 4-year | $66,355 | 30 † | $19,084 | $15,927 | 2.2 |
| 16 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $66,222 | 33 † | $19,783 | $17,339 | 2.3 |
| 17 | Texas State University San Marcos, TX Public · 4-year | $65,502 | 48 | $23,115 | $16,805 | 2.2 |
| 18 | California State University-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $65,366 | 40 | $15,000 | $3,967 | 0.6 |
| 19 | University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $65,024 | 61 | $14,545 | $12,548 | 1.8 |
| 20 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $64,510 | 25 † | $22,956 | $17,303 | 2.3 |
| 21 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $64,428 | 29 † | $13,811 | $12,470 | 1.8 |
| 22 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $64,285 | 81 | $14,942 | $6,541 | 0.9 |
| 23 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $61,953 | 46 | $26,625 | $19,680 | 2.9 |
| 24 | Montana State University Bozeman, MT Public · 4-year | $60,221 | 50 | $20,399 | $22,499 | 3.3 |
| 25 | Oklahoma State University-Main Campus Stillwater, OK Public · 4-year | $59,979 | 42 | $18,500 | $17,447 | 2.8 |
| 26 | Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ Public · 4-year | $58,491 | 36 † | $23,250 | $14,158 | 2.6 |
| 27 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $57,890 | 27 † | $18,330 | $13,138 | 2.3 |
| 28 | University of South Florida Tampa, FL Public · 4-year | $57,628 | 28 † | $19,000 | $9,812 | 1.7 |
| 29 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $57,244 | 51 | $18,268 | $14,967 | 2.9 |
| 30 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $55,784 | 31 † | $20,005 | $16,674 | 3.5 |
| 31 | Oregon State University Corvallis, OR Public · 4-year | $53,349 | 38 † | $21,666 | $19,604 | 4.8 |
| 32 | Iowa State University Ames, IA Public · 4-year | $49,875 | 43 | $22,763 | $18,589 | 5.8 |
| 33 | The University of Texas at San Antonio San Antonio, TX Public · 4-year | $46,726 | 25 † | $21,000 | $10,836 | 3.6 |
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 Microbiology and Immunology (CIP 2605, 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 33.
- 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 Microbiology and Immunology 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | $74,166 | 8 | University of California-Santa Barbara |
| Texas | $65,502 | 3 | Texas Tech University |
| Arizona | $57,244 | 3 | Northern Arizona University |
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