"Dartmouth College has the highest median mid-career salary (defined as salary at 10 years or greater after graduation)... In general, engineering schools produced the best starting salaries, and represented eight out of the top 10 schools in starting salary. On the other hand, Ivy League Schools are the best bet for mid-career pay, with five out of the top 10." - Bret Taylor from Bookmarklet

Yup, there I am... high end school (Carnegie Mellon for Graduate degree) low end degree/career (they don't list Non Profit Arts Management but its close enough to anything arts related and social work to fit on that graph). ah well! - Rachel Lea Fox

After going through both small private elite and large public top 50 schools, I've come to the conclusion that the former prepare their students for academia, while the latter prepare them for industry/businesses. If you want to spend your life in the ivory tower at the pinnacle of knowledge, go elite. If you want a job and career, save your parents' money and go to state college. - LANjackal

Nice to see Harvey Mudd represent well. I think Mudd is an example of a small private school that does prepare students for industry. There is no large graduate program so the professors are there to teach. There is also a industry/college project program called "clinic" that has students working int teams on real problems for real companies. - Joe Beda

10 years? My career is apparently more than half over... - Brian Johns

(This table is kinda bs. Sorry.) - ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift

"According to research… attending one relatively elite college (like Harvey Mudd) rather than another (like Harvard) doesn’t much affect a student’s future income. Rather, it’s the student who matters. Hard-working, ambitious students will do well wherever they go. The opposite applies to mediocre or lazy students. The one exception was lower-income students. For them, the college mattered more." - Jim Norris

Tutivillus: it is not perfect (self-reported, not randomized), but the sample size is quite large according to the article (> 1 million people) - Bret Taylor

And furthermore, there's no way for it to be perfect, though it's certainly not reasonable to just call it BS. This is one representation of the data, from which generalizations are made. - George S.

Jim -- this is my experience also :) Mudd asked me to help convince students to go there at some point. A bright eye'd high school senior asked me why he should choose Mudd over X. My response was that you'd get a great education at any top school so pick the one at which you'll be most comfortable. I didn't get invited to do that again... - Joe Beda