We look at the results of the new 2014-2015 PayScale College Salary Report by narrowing it down to UC campuses. We first report on the top 16 California 4 year undergraduate campuses, which include 6 UC campuses, and then add the ranking for UC Riverside and UC Santa Cruz.
For each campus we report their Early Career Salary of 0-5 years out, and then their Mid-Career Salary of 10 or more years out. We also add the percent of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) degrees since they can often give higher salaries.
The rankings are by the Mid-Career Salaries, and are in dollars.
The stated accuracy is about plus or minus 5%. To that extent, the schools ranked from 6 to 16 fall within the same error bars around the $100,000 mid-career salary.
Of course, we point out that UC Irvine ranks number 9 among California schools.
| Rank |
School |
Early Career |
Mid-Career |
% Stem Degrees |
| 1 |
Harvey Mudd College |
75,600 |
133,800 |
86% |
| 2 |
Stanford U. |
62,900 |
126,400 |
28% |
| 3 |
Caltech |
74,800 |
126,200 |
93% |
| 4 |
UC Berkeley |
59,500 |
114,200 |
31% |
| 5 |
Santa Clara U. |
56,600 |
111,700 |
15% |
| 6 |
UC San Diego |
50,600 |
102,100 |
38% |
| 7 |
Occidental College |
45,600 |
101,900 |
18% |
| 8 |
CalPoly San Luis Obispo |
56,200 |
100,100 |
31% |
| 9 |
UC Irvine |
49,300 |
99,100 |
30% |
| 10 |
College of the Pacific |
51,500 |
98,300 |
31% |
| 11 |
USC |
51,700 |
98,000 |
13% |
| 11 |
Westmont College |
40,300 |
98,000 |
16% |
| 13 |
UC Davis |
50,800 |
97,900 |
34% |
| 14 |
UC Santa Barbara |
47,000 |
96,900 |
16% |
| 15 |
Claremont McKenna |
50,100 |
96,000 |
12% |
| 16 |
UC Los Angeles |
50,300 |
95,900 |
21% |
| 23 |
UC Riverside |
45,600 |
89,600 |
22% |
| 32 |
UC Santa Cruz |
46,200 |
83,000 |
20% |
|
About Dennis SILVERMAN
I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine.
For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
