College Admissions: Highest Paying Majors Revealed

College Admissions: Highest Paying Majors Revealed

Show me the money! Students and parents alike are paralyzed with fear regarding the availability of decent paying jobs for recent college graduates. Each year www.payscale.com surveys the market and ranks the highest paying jobs by college major, and the stats for 2011 were just released. Despite what many parents may think, business majors and nursing majors are pretty far down the list. There is one very clear theme however: ENGINEERING IS KING.

Of the 10 college majors that lead to the highest salaries, 7 are in engineering disciplines, and the remaining 3 are applied mathematics, physics and computer science. Petroleum engineering tops the list by a long shot with a median starting salary of $97,900 and a mid-career median pay of $155,000. The drop-off to #2 is severe, with chemical engineers receiving a starting median salary of $64.500 and a mid-career median pay of $109,000. Electrical, materials science, aerospace, computer and nuclear engineering also made the top 10. Biomedical, mechanical, civil, environmental and industrial engineering managed to squeak into the top 20.

High school prep for engineering majors

Sadly though, U.S. society is notoriously inept at getting students interested in engineering. While teens from the Middle East, Asia and northern Europe flock to engineering programs, U.S. students seem disinterested. High schools don’t do a great job of showing students possible engineering careers, and parents are left wondering how to expose their kids to the options. Robotics and Lego groups at the grade school level are a great start. In high school, summer camps and college-based summer programs at schools like MIT provide a wonderful introduction to the world of engineering. Web sites like http://www.discoverengineering.org/ provide examples of what engineers do each day and links to resource sites.

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Golden opportunity for young women

Women are courted by college engineering programs like recruited athletes. While medical schools and law schools have a preponderance of women, engineering is the one area where men still dominate the classroom. Nationally, only about 30% of college engineering majors are women. Web sites like Engineer Girl provide guidance and scholarship opportunities. Women can expect to slide into engineering programs with slightly lower grades and SATs than their male counterparts, and the sky is the limit when they leave college with employers hungry for female engineers.

Get your math + science together early

One barrier to engineering for boys and girls alike may be the rigorous math and science courses that many engineering programs want students to have completed in high school. A strong Math SAT or ACT score is also a must. Calculus is a requirement for entrance to many engineering programs, and admissions likes to see 3 years of a lab science in high school. If you don’t have strong scores and missed out on math and science courses, consider a 3-2 engineering program. In this format, you attend a liberal arts college for the first 3 years and are then guaranteed admission to a larger engineering program for your last 2 years (there is a minimum GPA, but it is usually very reasonable). Washington U. in St. Louis, Dartmouth and Columbia are just a few of the prestigious universities that participate in the engineering portion of the 3-2 programs. A sample list of the participating liberal arts colleges for the Columbia program can be found at  http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/admissions/engineering/combined/affils.php.

For those of you who think engineering is boring, think again. From the space shuttle to racing cars and wind power, engineering is one of the most cutting-edge and interactive careers any student could choose—and the money doesn’t hurt either!

Cristiana Quinn, M.Ed. is the founder of College Admission Advisors, LLC which provides strategic, college counseling and athletic recruiting services for students. www.collegeadvisorsonline.com.

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