Georgetown graduates earn the second-highest salaries among all recent graduates of Southern universities, according to a report conducted by Payscale.com.
With a median starting salary of $55,000 and a median mid-career salary of $110,000, Georgetown fell just behind Rice University, where the median starting salary is $64,000, and mid-career is also $110,000.
Although Georgetown tops the ranks of the Southern schools, both the mean starting- and mid-career salaries of bachelor’s degree graduates fall below those of all of the top 10 schools in the Northeast. Among these, Dartmouth College ranks first with $58,000 for starting salary and $134,000 for mid-career salary. Ivy League schools comprise half of this list. Princeton University, Yale University, Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania were ranked second, fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was ranked third.
Of the other schools on the Southern list, Duke University ranked third with a median mid-career salary of $106,000. Further down on the list, Davidson College was ranked seventh, University of Virginia eighth and the George Washington University ninth.
Top schools elsewhere in the nation include the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago in the Midwest, and the Colorado School of Mines and the University of Colorado Boulder in the West – excluding California – and Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology in California.
The survey only considered students without graduate degrees.
According to data compiled by the Georgetown University Career Education Center, from 2005 to 2007, 54 to 61 percent of the respondents to the annual Senior Survey Report immediately joined the work force after obtaining their bachelors degree. Payscale.com used this data to rank the school.
According to the poll, jobs in finance, namely investment banking, attracted the greatest number of Georgetown graduates each year. It is also one of the highest-paying industries according to Michael Schaub, executive director of the Career Education Center. Other popular fields of employment for Georgetown graduates include education, government, law and consulting.
Schaub added that there is little correlation between a student’s major and his or her future salary.
“Georgetown students enter a variety of career fields regardless of major,” he said. “Thus, students majoring in the College, [the School of Foreign Service] and [the School of Nursing and Health Studies] may earn as much money as a finance major.”
Some recent graduates have found their Georgetown degrees gave them advantages in their job hunts.
Allyssa Jones (COL ’08) is working full time in the information and technology department of a private high school, while also pursuing a graduate degree.
She said that she is not surprised that Georgetown graduates perform so well in the job market.
“I think it has a lot to do with Georgetown’s reputation. I’ve found that having `Georgetown University’ on your résumé generally elicits a positive response from the potential employer,” Jones said.
Shaub said that he believes the reason that Georgetown graduates command such high salaries is because of the university’s wide-ranging curriculum.
“Georgetown’s emphasis on a liberal arts education prepares students well for many types of jobs,” he said.
Another important factor, according to Schaub, is the extensive network of internships that students take advantage of while still attending the university.
“Many of our graduates have substantive job experience coming out of college,” he said, “which puts them at a competitive advantage in the job market.”
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