When Paulina Pimentel-Mora was looking to transfer to a four-year school from a two-year program at Citrus College in California, getting a high-paying job out of college was one of her primary goals. She considered Ivy League and highly ranked non-Ivy League schools, such as the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley. She ultimately chose an Ivy, Yale University, because it provided the academic rigor, small community and networking opportunities she felt would help her land such a job.
On average, Ivy League graduates earn substantially more than graduates from other four-year universities, according to the most recent data from PayScale for more than 1,500 schools.
Early-career (which PayScale defines as three years of work experience) median pay in 2022 was $86,025 for Ivy League graduates, compared to $58,643 for those who graduated from other universities. That gap grows wider when looking at mid-career (20 years experience) median pay. Ivy League graduates earned $161,888 mid-career compared to $101,777 for those from other institutions.
Pimental-Mora, who went to community college for free under a California “promise program,” says she’d heard of statistics showing Ivy League graduates make more money or get better job offers than other graduates, and that played a “key role” in her decision to transfer to Yale. Early-career median pay for Yale graduates was $86,300 in 2022 and the mid-career median pay was $163,900, according to PayScale.
“While the state schools I was considering, UCLA and UC Berkeley, were prominent in their own rights, I felt at the time and still believe now that Yale’s reputation as an Ivy League would assist in my career prospects more so than an equally comparable state university,” Pimentel-Mora, who is set to graduate in December 2023 with a degree in political science, wrote in an email.
[Read: 10 Most, Least Expensive Private Colleges.]
Return on Investment for an Ivy League Degree
Students considering an Ivy League degree should understand the nuances involved in determining the return on their investment, experts say. The average annual cost to attend an Ivy League school after financial aid, or net price, is $23,234, according to U.S. News data. The net price for ranked non-Ivy League schools was more than $32,000.
Additionally, Harvard University, Princeton University and Yale fill out the top three spots on U.S. News’s Best Value Schools list. All three of these schools have “no loans” policies, which means they pledge to meet students’ full financial need without requiring them to take out any loans. The remaining Ivy League schools, with the exception of Columbia University, which elected not to answer the most recent U.S. News survey, are all in the top 20 Best Value Schools, and most also have a no loans policy.
In Pimental-Mora’s case, attending UCLA, even as an in-state student, would have cost her more than UPenn or Yale, because of the financial aid the Ivies offered. Her most generous financial aid offer was from Yale, which gave her a scholarship covering roughly 90% of her costs.
The net price numbers reflect cost only for admitted students who require need-based aid. But the majority of students who attend Ivy League schools come from high-income families and often don’t need aid, says Jeff Strohl, director of research at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
The financial value of an Ivy League degree for those students is debatable, he says. Many attend rigorous prep schools and by the time they arrive at an Ivy League school, their career prospects are often greater than those of the average student, he says.
“In general, we’re going to start off with the bias — and it plays out through some data — that privilege begets privilege,” says Strohl, who is also a co-author of the book “The Merit Myth: How Our Colleges Favor the Rich and Divide America.”
He referenced a 2011 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which found that for students who come from high-income families, the economic benefit of a degree from an Ivy League school or other selective university “was not all that much because they already had these benefits of privilege,” he says.
“The one group they do benefit are the less privileged who do end up going to these institutions,” Strohl says. “One of the channels that they don’t identify in the paper, but you can identify through other mechanisms, is this access to better recruitment.”
The CEW provides a tool for students to see what the potential ROI is for their degree by institution. PayScale also offers ROI breakdowns.
“Payscale’s College Salary Report consistently shows that graduates from these prestigious Ivy League universities have high earnings that outrank other graduates,” PayScale data analyst Jackson Gruver wrote in a statement. “However, large public universities dominate our College ROI rankings, demonstrating that one does not need an Ivy League education to optimize the value received from their college experience.”
[Read: See the Average College Tuition in 2022-2023.]
Another factor to consider when weighing cost versus potential earnings, Strohl says, is that Ivy League graduates are more likely to look for work in bigger cities where the salary may be higher, but so is the cost of living. He says that context is key when factoring how far the salary goes.
“When we see these salaries coming out of selective institutions, we’re not controlling for the market that they’re in,” he says. “If it is the case that these selective graduates from the Ivy League tend toward New York and Washington, D.C., in the political and analytics sphere, their salary needs to be adjusted in our analytic frame to the price of living of the area.”
Brand Recognition, Accessibility and Networking
Having an Ivy League degree on your resume carries a lot of weight, experts say, and it can also open doors that might ordinarily be closed.
Pimentel-Mora started at Yale in 2020 and says she was immediately contacted through LinkedIn by consulting firms wanting to form a relationship. When she’s interviewed for summer internships, she says interviewers want to talk with her about being a Yale student and what her experience is like. She’s now studying abroad at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, and she credits her admission there to Yale’s connection to and partnerships with the school.
Experts say students at Ivy League schools tend to have access to influential people and major companies that students at other schools often don’t. While at Yale, Pimentel-Mora says renowned medical experts, entertainers and authors have spoken to her classes. The Yale Office of Career Strategy also regularly hosts information sessions and networking events with major companies such as Goldman Sachs.
She says the connections she’s been able to make on her own and with the help of professors is “invaluable.”
“This access cannot be found just anywhere,” she says.
There is a perception that Ivy League coursework is more rigorous, and in some cases that is likely true, Strohl says. But he adds that there are other less selective schools with rigorous coursework whose students might get passed up because some employers have a bias toward the reputation of Ivy League schools.
Some of those top companies tend to “troll known pools of talent” on Ivy League campuses to recruit students for internships or jobs, he says.
Many students come into Ivies from privileged backgrounds, and can use their family relationships and prior networks — in addition to the Ivy’s resources — to help find high-paying work.
Pimentel-Mora doesn’t just chalk up her opportunities to her school’s name and vast network. She says Yale provides an extensive amount of pre-professional development workshops, including mock interviews, resume help and workshops that teach students how best to pitch and represent themselves to employers.
“If you struggle with applying to job opportunities, Yale has the resources to assist you,” she says. “I would definitely say that career-wise, attending an Ivy League school such as Yale is much more beneficial than it could ever be harmful.”
The table below shows the annual cost of attendance after financial aid for each Ivy League university, according to U.S. News data, as well as the early-career and mid-career median pay, according to PayScale data.
| SCHOOL (STATE) | AVERAGE COST AFTER AID | EARLY-CAREER MEDIAN PAY | MID-CAREER MEDIAN PAY | U.S. NEWS RANK AND CATEGORY |
| Brown University (RI) | $29,544 | $82,400 | $153,000 | 13 (tie), National Universities |
| Columbia University (NY) | $22,823 | $85,900 | $150,900 | 18 (tie), National Universities |
| Cornell University (NY) | $37,042 | $83,500 | $151,900 | 17, National Universities |
| Dartmouth College (NH) | $32,410 | $85,600 | $162,900 | 12, National Universities |
| Harvard University (MA) | $13,872 | $88,700 | $169,500 | 3 (tie), National Universities |
| University of Pennsylvania | $25,046 | $86,400 | $165,700 | 7 (tie), National Universities |
| Princeton University (NJ) | $9,836 | $89,400 | $177,300 | 1, National Universities |
| Yale University (CT) | $15,296 | $86,300 | $163,900 | 3 (tie), National Universities |
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How Much Is an Ivy League Degree Worth? originally appeared on usnews.com
