Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Political Science (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Political Science earn a median of $63,293 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $44,760 and $85,406. We rank the 390 U.S. colleges whose Political Science programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 30,084 graduates in all. That puts Political Science at #54 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank by national median earnings.
Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, leads at $106,153, 69% above the median ranked school ($62,871). The gap between schools is moderate: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $57,188 and $69,869, and the lowest earns $40,805. 187 of the 390 ranked schools (48%) match or beat the national median.
Private nonprofit colleges dominate the top 20: 20 private nonprofit, 0 public and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 66% are public. The top 20 are spread across 13 states, with Massachusetts the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost more than most: a median net price of $27,735 a year, against $18,211 across all 390 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $17,500 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 1.9 years.
Showing the top 50 of 390 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | Dartmouth College Hanover, NH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $106,153 | 127 | $17,500 | $29,519 | 1.8 |
| 2 | Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $102,789 | 56 | $14,000 | $15,846 | 0.9 |
| 3 | Columbia University in the City of New York New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $100,245 | 159 | $21,500 | $21,590 | 1.3 |
| 4 | Harvard University Cambridge, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $95,838 | 56 | — | $19,066 | 1.4 |
| 5 | Cornell University Ithaca, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $95,391 | 73 | $14,400 | $28,690 | 1.9 |
| 6 | Washington and Lee University Lexington, VA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $95,190 | 33 † | — | $23,781 | 1.6 |
| 7 | University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN Private nonprofit · 4-year | $94,297 | 96 | $19,000 | $26,780 | 1.9 |
| 8 | Trinity College Hartford, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $94,097 | 47 | $25,000 | $34,832 | 2.5 |
| 9 | Bucknell University Lewisburg, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $94,028 | 44 | $25,500 | $40,766 | 2.8 |
| 10 | Emory University Atlanta, GA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $94,001 | 60 | $17,500 | $22,585 | 1.5 |
| 11 | Santa Clara University Santa Clara, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $93,518 | 40 | $20,500 | $50,062 | 3.5 |
| 12 | University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $93,033 | 64 | $14,250 | $28,699 | 2.0 |
| 13 | Yale University New Haven, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $90,764 | 84 | $14,749 | $23,777 | 1.8 |
| 14 | Elon University Elon, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $89,685 | 31 † | $20,500 | $41,555 | 3.0 |
| 15 | Bowdoin College Brunswick, ME Private nonprofit · 4-year | $89,253 | 53 | $19,634 | $14,398 | 1.1 |
| 16 | Princeton University Princeton, NJ Private nonprofit · 4-year | $88,576 | 32 † | — | $6,128 | 0.5 |
| 17 | Duke University Durham, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $88,459 | 46 | $14,016 | $29,612 | 2.2 |
| 18 | Williams College Williamstown, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $88,339 | 43 | $10,750 | $17,716 | 1.5 |
| 19 | College of the Holy Cross Worcester, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $88,088 | 79 | $27,000 | $38,782 | 3.3 |
| 20 | Lafayette College Easton, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $87,904 | 46 | $13,640 | $34,433 | 2.7 |
| 21 | University of Chicago Chicago, IL Private nonprofit · 4-year | $87,869 | 51 | $18,500 | $14,860 | 1.1 |
| 22 | Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $86,537 | 134 | $18,000 | $41,704 | 3.7 |
| 23 | Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $85,668 | 63 | $22,500 | $28,719 | 2.2 |
| 24 | Brown University Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $85,388 | 42 | $14,481 | $25,184 | 2.2 |
| 25 | Fairfield University Fairfield, CT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $83,709 | 30 † | $27,000 | $48,095 | 4.2 |
| 26 | Brigham Young University Provo, UT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $83,209 | 83 | $10,646 | $15,564 | 1.4 |
| 27 | Colgate University Hamilton, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $83,188 | 38 † | $16,250 | $28,786 | 2.4 |
| 28 | Villanova University Villanova, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $83,179 | 113 | $25,620 | $43,756 | 3.7 |
| 29 | University of Maryland Global Campus Adelphi, MD Public · 4-year | $82,263 | 67 | $19,910 | $22,063 | 2.0 |
| 30 | California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA Public · 4-year | $81,843 | 71 | $17,831 | $16,665 | 1.5 |
| 31 | Loyola University Maryland Baltimore, MD Private nonprofit · 4-year | $81,575 | 52 | $27,000 | $30,574 | 2.8 |
| 32 | American Public University System Charles Town, WV For-profit · 4-year | $81,056 | 57 | $21,728 | $9,597 | 0.8 |
| 33 | New York University New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $80,957 | 126 | $20,500 | $37,050 | 3.3 |
| 34 | Saint Anselm College Manchester, NH Private nonprofit · 4-year | $80,763 | 31 † | $27,000 | $34,779 | 3.6 |
| 35 | Bates College Lewiston, ME Private nonprofit · 4-year | $80,714 | 37 † | $11,532 | $29,351 | 2.7 |
| 36 | Hobart William Smith Colleges Geneva, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $79,778 | 42 | $27,000 | $31,563 | 2.9 |
| 37 | George Washington University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $79,692 | 242 | $21,723 | $36,586 | 3.7 |
| 38 | Georgetown University Washington, DC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $79,502 | 168 | $15,384 | $40,815 | 4.1 |
| 39 | University of Virginia-Main Campus Charlottesville, VA Public · 4-year | $78,310 | 82 | $16,049 | $21,565 | 2.1 |
| 40 | Tufts University Medford, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $78,180 | 54 | $17,850 | $39,998 | 4.3 |
| 41 | Barnard College New York, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $77,805 | 26 † | $18,250 | $28,800 | 2.7 |
| 42 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI Public · 4-year | $77,480 | 267 | $17,965 | $13,138 | 1.2 |
| 43 | Middlebury College Middlebury, VT Private nonprofit · 4-year | $77,444 | 25 † | $18,297 | $31,483 | 3.1 |
| 44 | Gettysburg College Gettysburg, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $76,597 | 68 | $26,749 | $31,490 | 3.1 |
| 45 | Stonehill College Easton, MA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $76,123 | 35 † | $25,000 | $33,016 | 3.8 |
| 46 | The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX Public · 4-year | $75,988 | 315 | $19,500 | $19,857 | 1.9 |
| 47 | Pepperdine University Malibu, CA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $75,954 | 29 † | $23,625 | $58,098 | 6.0 |
| 48 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA Public · 4-year | $75,687 | 186 | $23,500 | $24,953 | 2.6 |
| 49 | Providence College Providence, RI Private nonprofit · 4-year | $75,637 | 53 | $27,000 | $48,523 | 5.5 |
| 50 | St Lawrence University Canton, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $75,486 | 52 | $27,000 | $28,651 | 2.9 |
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 Political Science (CIP 4510, 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 390.
- 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 Political 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connecticut | $74,190 | 7 | Trinity College |
| District of Columbia | $73,761 | 6 | George Washington University |
| Maine | $73,275 | 4 | Bowdoin College |
| New Hampshire | $72,763 | 4 | Dartmouth College |
| Indiana | $69,992 | 7 | University of Notre Dame |
| Virginia | $69,725 | 14 | Washington and Lee University |
| Utah | $69,601 | 4 | Brigham Young University |
| Massachusetts | $68,916 | 21 | Harvard University |
| Maryland | $68,577 | 8 | University of Maryland Global Campus |
| Rhode Island | $68,098 | 4 | Brown University |
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