Poly grads make big bucks

NYU may have purchased Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, but what it can’t buy is a spot on Forbes’ list of Top 20 Colleges for Getting Rich. Polytechnic, however, made the list.

Forbes compiled the list based on a recent study conducted by Payscale.com, an online global compensation data provider. Polytechnic was ranked No. 9 among national colleges whose alumni earn the highest salaries. The median salary for graduates with zero to five years of experience amounted to $62,400, while individuals with 10 to 20 years of experience averaged to $114,000.

Michael A. Hutmaker, dean of student affairs at Polytechnic, said it’s great the school is being recognized by such a well-known name and magazine.

“Prospective students can now see that their time and energy will pay off,” he said.

Polytechnic also ranked fourth in the nation among highest earning engineering schools, trailing behind the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Technology and Harvey Mudd College, according to other college rankings by Payscale. Polytechnic’s New York rival, Cooper Union, was ranked one spot below at No. 8 with a starting median salary of $62,200, but both schools had the same mid-career median salary.

Nina Weber, director of career services at Polytechnic, was very happy about the rankings and is hopeful that the median salary for Polytechnic students will continue to increase.

“Hopefully it would increase because [students] are getting state-of-the-art information from many of the industries,” she said. “Being associated with NYU will now also give students access to inroads to special companies.”

When Payscale and Forbes created the rankings, they only took into account the salaries of graduates who were full-time employees and only held bachelors degrees at the time of employment. Foreign, military and business schools, as well as schools whose graduating classes were below 1,000 students, were excluded from the rankings.

While NYU did not make the Forbes list, it took a spot on Payscale’s list of Northeast colleges with top salary potential. At No. 33, it had a starting median salary of $50,300 and ranked below SUNY-Binghamton, Boston College, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Fordham University. NYU, however, was ranked higher than all four of those schools in U.S. News and World Report’s 2009 America’s Best Colleges ranking.

But in a survey conducted by the NYU Wasserman Center for Career Development called Life Beyond the Square, median starting salaries may be significantly higher or lower than the average. Depending on the NYU school, median salaries range from $68,400 for graduates from the College of Nursing to a below-average median salary of $32,000 for graduates of the Silver School of Social Work.

Fortunately for students, Trudy Steinfeld, executive director at the Wasserman Center, does not expect the numbers to drop, despite the declining economy.

“The trend has certainly been an increase [in salaries], despite the state of the labor market,” she said.


Byron Cheung is Polytechnic editor. E-mail him at bcheung@nyunews.com.