Bachelor’s degree · earnings 4 years after completing
Highest-Paying Colleges for Zoology (Bachelor's)
Graduates who complete a bachelor's degree in Zoology earn a median of $44,055 four years after finishing, and the middle half earn between $32,942 and $58,785. We rank the 35 U.S. colleges whose Zoology programs have at least 25 graduates in the Scorecard earnings sample, 1,834 graduates in all. That puts Zoology at #123 of 131 bachelor's degree fields we rank, toward the lower end of the pay scale.
University of Connecticut, in Connecticut, leads at $69,471, 61% above the median ranked school ($43,207). Most schools are tightly bunched: the middle half of ranked schools earn between $41,149 and $48,933, and the lowest earns $35,875, so outside the leaders the choice of school moves earnings less than the choice of major. 16 of the 35 ranked schools (46%) match or beat the national median.
Public universities dominate the top 20: 18 public, 2 private nonprofit and 0 for-profit. Across all ranked schools, 83% are public. The top 20 are spread across 16 states, with Ohio the most common (3).
The top 20 schools cost about the same as the rest of the list: a median net price of $17,347 a year, against $17,940 across all 35 ranked schools. Their graduates who borrowed carry a median of $22,500 in federal loans, about 46% 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 5.6 years.
Showing the top 35 of 35 ranked schools. Select a column heading to re-sort the table. † = fewer than 40 graduates in the earnings sample.
| 1 | University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Public · 4-year | $69,471 | 39 † | $23,250 | $25,097 | 3.2 |
| 2 | University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus Norman, OK Public · 4-year | $55,682 | 86 | $23,250 | $15,300 | 2.9 |
| 3 | Ohio University-Main Campus Athens, OH Public · 4-year | $55,352 | 154 | $23,356 | $21,637 | 4.5 |
| 4 | Tarleton State University Stephenville, TX Public · 4-year | $54,030 | 35 † | $18,500 | $20,783 | 4.3 |
| 5 | University of California-Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Public · 4-year | $53,727 | 28 † | — | $16,109 | 3.8 |
| 6 | North Dakota State University-Main Campus Fargo, ND Public · 4-year | $50,701 | 26 † | $23,808 | $15,543 | 4.5 |
| 7 | University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI Public · 4-year | $50,080 | 77 | $23,250 | $17,354 | 5.5 |
| 8 | Weber State University Ogden, UT Public · 4-year | $49,480 | 32 † | $18,532 | $10,258 | 3.8 |
| 9 | Berry College Mount Berry, GA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $48,958 | 39 † | $22,500 | $22,320 | 5.9 |
| 10 | Kansas State University Manhattan, KS Public · 4-year | $48,908 | 35 † | $21,750 | $19,406 | 5.5 |
| 11 | Indiana University-Bloomington Bloomington, IN Public · 4-year | $48,161 | 26 † | $19,500 | $16,264 | 5.6 |
| 12 | San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA Public · 4-year | $45,722 | 31 † | $11,000 | $12,278 | 5.6 |
| 13 | Ohio State University-Main Campus Columbus, OH Public · 4-year | $45,501 | 81 | $21,375 | $17,339 | 7.4 |
| 14 | University of Wyoming Laramie, WY Public · 4-year | $44,424 | 46 | $19,221 | $13,599 | 9.9 |
| 15 | Colorado State University-Fort Collins Fort Collins, CO Public · 4-year | $44,226 | 156 | $23,875 | $21,279 | 24.0 |
| 16 | Oregon State University Corvallis, OR Public · 4-year | $44,201 | 41 | $24,596 | $19,604 | 10.9 |
| 17 | Texas State University San Marcos, TX Public · 4-year | $43,943 | 59 | $25,000 | $16,805 | 7.4 |
| 18 | Southern Illinois University-Carbondale Carbondale, IL Public · 4-year | $43,207 | 61 | $19,750 | $13,297 | 7.5 |
| 19 | University of New England Biddeford, ME Private nonprofit · 4-year | $42,941 | 38 † | $26,948 | $38,107 | 30.8 |
| 20 | Miami University-Oxford Oxford, OH Public · 4-year | $42,883 | 45 | $22,500 | $28,384 | 16.7 |
| 21 | SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry Syracuse, NY Public · 4-year | $42,505 | 36 † | — | $18,952 | 11.2 |
| 22 | Oklahoma State University-Main Campus Stillwater, OK Public · 4-year | $42,474 | 30 † | $20,500 | $17,447 | 9.1 |
| 23 | University of Florida Gainesville, FL Public · 4-year | $41,961 | 25 † | $17,603 | $6,541 | 3.4 |
| 24 | Washington State University Pullman, WA Public · 4-year | $41,888 | 40 | $17,625 | $14,971 | — |
| 25 | Michigan State University East Lansing, MI Public · 4-year | $41,768 | 121 | $25,000 | $19,680 | 11.3 |
| 26 | Texas A&M University-College Station College Station, TX Public · 4-year | $41,543 | 34 † | $16,713 | $21,315 | 12.7 |
| 27 | State University of New York at Oswego Oswego, NY Public · 4-year | $40,755 | 62 | $22,500 | $16,236 | 13.0 |
| 28 | Delaware Valley University Doylestown, PA Private nonprofit · 4-year | $40,575 | 27 † | $26,400 | $28,278 | 27.7 |
| 29 | Canisius University Buffalo, NY Private nonprofit · 4-year | $40,174 | 62 | $23,250 | $17,940 | 16.2 |
| 30 | Unity Environmental University New Gloucester, ME Private nonprofit · 4-year | $39,302 | 30 † | $27,000 | $19,104 | — |
| 31 | Lees-McRae College Banner Elk, NC Private nonprofit · 4-year | $38,699 | 38 † | $23,000 | $28,340 | 24.4 |
| 32 | California State Polytechnic University-Humboldt Arcata, CA Public · 4-year | $38,495 | 49 | $20,095 | $13,171 | — |
| 33 | North Carolina State University at Raleigh Raleigh, NC Public · 4-year | $38,440 | 49 | $20,500 | $17,303 | 15.8 |
| 34 | University of Vermont Burlington, VT Public · 4-year | $38,421 | 38 † | $22,250 | $19,343 | — |
| 35 | Kent State University at Kent Kent, OH Public · 4-year | $35,875 | 58 | $25,000 | $20,787 | — |
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 Zoology (CIP 2607, 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 35.
- 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 Zoology 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 | $45,722 | 3 | University of California-Santa Barbara |
| Ohio | $44,192 | 4 | Ohio University-Main Campus |
| Texas | $43,943 | 3 | Tarleton State University |
| New York | $40,755 | 3 | SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry |
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