Return on Investment (ROI) Degrees Ranked - CS is the goated major?


Isn't the consensus among this forum that Finance/Econ at ivies have the highest ROI / lifetime value?


So how are all the top ROI degrees/schools basically all STEM majors, other than Wharton Finance at #2? Is it because most people don't make it to MD? Is CS at a top school the goated major/combo? Really intrigued by this. 

 

looking at aggregate results is usually not a great indicator of individual success/experience.  From what I've seen, work ethic, connections, and just knowing how to play the game determine outcomes more than your school/major (which obviously still matters). 

 

Finance doesn’t exist as a major in many of the top schools (outside of Wharton). So among majors such as economics or liberal arts majors, there is a very varied outcome when it comes to career interests and goals. It’s not like CS where almost everyone is going for FAANG as the baseline.

Most of the business school kids on this site are state school kids, and at the state schools a lot of people are perfectly content ending up as a FP&A manager at some regional city making $120k or so after working for 10 years. So that will bring any ROI averages down by a lot and you don’t see those majors/schools.

Array
 

Hotel Administration doesn’t pay anywhere close to traditional high finance roles although it does come with its own perks.

The other major is Econ which is no different than the examples I gave above

Ross is a state school which again revisit my point earlier. 


I don’t know much about NYU to comment. 

Array
 

Nah im not talking about cornell's hotel school im talking about cornell dyson (cornells undergrad b school)

sure ross is a state school, but it's still a top undergrad b school lmao

 
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ddd1

No, I went to an ivy

You fancy, huh?

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Most Helpful

These "lifetime earnings" numbers were extrapolated from two things:

1. Earnings up to 2 years after graduation calculated from the College Scorecard

2. Census data which says how much someone earns, whether they went to college, and if so, what their major was, but not what college they went to

The way it is calculated is as follows.

First, they take the z score of the college scorecard data.  So let's say a kid who goes to Wharton and studies finance has earnings 1.5 standard deviations above the mean of other finance majors.  Then, they calculate the lifetime earnings through the census data with that z score.  So they assume a Wharton kid is going to follow the standard earnings path of an finance major, but 1.5 standard deviations higher.

The article does make a decent attempt to predict lifetime earnings with the data they have access to, but I don't think you should rely on it.

 
kellycriterion

I suspect this is an issue of fat tails. Properly accounting for the whales who are 2-3+ z-score makes a big difference in the figures. Thanks for explaining.

Well I guess now we know where their premise for Six Sigma that they worship comes from.

The poster formerly known as theAudiophile. Just turned up to 11, like the stereo.
 
Phil Leotardo

What do Stanford cognitive science majors do after graduation?

Cognitive sciences is basically psychology. So if they continued on that path possibly a PhD in Psychology. 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

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