Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Physics (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Physics earn a median of $76,786 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $51,777 and $102,948. We rank the 34 U.S. colleges whose Physics programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,271 graduates in all. That puts Physics at #32 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Massachusetts, leads at $131,025, 60% above the median ranked school ($81,730). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $73,235 and $89,316, and the lowest earns $60,393, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 22 of the 34 ranked schools (65%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 17 public, 3 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 88% are public. California places 6 schools in the top 20, ahead of Arizona (2).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $15,538 a year, against $16,160 across all 34 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $20,270 in federal loans, about 23% 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 34 of 34 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 | $131,025 | 28 † | $18,500 | $20,111 | 0.9 |
| 2 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC Public · 4-year | $103,477 | 26 † | $17,150 | $11,655 | 0.7 |
| 3 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $96,805 | 26 † | $23,886 | $16,665 | 1.1 |
| 4 | University of California-Irvine Irvine, CA Public · 4-year | $96,215 | 29 † | $13,590 | $14,251 | 1.0 |
| 5 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA Public · 4-year | $96,043 | 50 | $15,000 | $13,481 | 0.9 |
| 6 | University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Public · 4-year | $95,018 | 52 | $18,000 | $12,470 | 0.9 |
| 7 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $92,746 | 42 | $26,224 | $24,953 | 1.8 |
| 8 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $92,293 | 35 † | $21,148 | $13,138 | 0.9 |
| 9 | Southern Arkansas University Main Campus Magnolia, AR Public · 4-year | $89,685 | 27 † | $22,250 | $14,027 | 1.0 |
| 10 | University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Public · 4-year | $88,207 | 27 † | $20,500 | $16,674 | 1.3 |
| 11 | University of California-Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA Public · 4-year | $85,708 | 39 † | $21,000 | $12,548 | 1.0 |
| 12 | Bethel University (MN) Saint Paul, MN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $85,657 | 26 † | — | $28,556 | 2.4 |
| 13 | University of Wisconsin-River Falls River Falls, WI Public · 4-year | $85,638 | 25 † | $19,500 | $14,054 | 1.2 |
| 14 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $85,219 | 57 | $15,965 | $16,109 | 1.3 |
| 15 | Appalachian State University Boone, NC Public · 4-year | $82,399 | 34 † | $22,096 | $16,836 | 1.4 |
| 16 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $81,840 | 26 † | $20,270 | $36,228 | 3.1 |
| 17 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus University Park, PA Public · 4-year | $81,763 | 35 † | $23,299 | $32,875 | 2.9 |
| 18 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion Tempe, AZ Public · 4-year | $81,696 | 46 | $21,500 | $14,967 | 1.3 |
| 19 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL Public · 4-year | $81,077 | 37 † | $19,500 | $14,355 | 1.3 |
| 20 | University of Wisconsin-La Crosse La Crosse, WI Public · 4-year | $80,594 | 43 | $19,500 | $16,210 | 1.5 |
| 21 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN Public · 4-year | $80,025 | 36 † | $23,930 | $16,778 | 1.6 |
| 22 | University of California-Davis Davis, CA Public · 4-year | $78,569 | 34 † | $14,354 | $14,741 | 1.4 |
| 23 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus Seattle, WA Public · 4-year | $75,867 | 77 | $15,415 | $14,091 | 1.6 |
| 24 | University of Oregon Eugene, OR Public · 4-year | $75,160 | 31 † | — | $22,182 | 2.3 |
| 25 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $74,738 | 56 | $19,500 | $19,857 | 2.0 |
| 26 | Rowan University Glassboro, NJ Public · 4-year | $72,734 | 46 | $27,000 | $22,408 | 2.5 |
| 27 | The University of Texas at Arlington Arlington, TX Public · 4-year | $71,830 | 26 † | $22,964 | $13,951 | 1.5 |
| 28 | California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA Public · 4-year | $70,462 | 35 † | $18,654 | $10,440 | 1.2 |
| 29 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $69,334 | 43 | $22,750 | $37,050 | 4.4 |
| 30 | University of South Florida Tampa, FL Public · 4-year | $68,967 | 35 † | $17,599 | $9,812 | 1.1 |
| 31 | Rutgers University-New Brunswick New Brunswick, NJ Public · 4-year | $67,544 | 61 | $23,971 | $24,406 | 3.2 |
| 32 | Stony Brook University Stony Brook, NY Public · 4-year | $65,013 | 27 † | $21,341 | $18,784 | 2.6 |
| 33 | Western Washington University Bellingham, WA Public · 4-year | $63,833 | 27 † | — | $21,193 | 3.7 |
| 34 | Georgia State University Atlanta, GA Public · 4-year | $60,393 | 27 † | $21,859 | $15,931 | 2.4 |
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 Physics (CIP 4008, 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 34.
- 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 Physics 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 | $90,363 | 8 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo |
| New York | $69,334 | 3 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute |
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