NEWS: Olin is #11 in Salaries for Software and #10 for Tech According to New WSJ-Published Ranking of Top Colleges

May 19, 2023

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has published a new ranking of the Top Colleges for High-Paying Jobs in Software, with Olin ranking #11 in salaries for software and #10 for technology.

According to the ranking, graduates of Olin College of Engineering who enter the software and technology industries are out-earning their peers from other colleges and universities. Fully 35% of Olin graduates work in the tech/software space. This ranking is a notable illustration of the College's ROI as the data further shows that Olin graduates receive an annual salary premium of $31K during their career. 

The WSJ ranking looked at just the top 20 ROI schools out of all schools - separated out by private and public, with Olin ranking #11 in all salaries for graduates from private schools working in the software space and #10 in all salaries for grads in the technology space. Graduates don't have to have majored in the fields they eventually entered.

According to the WSJ article, the ranking of salaries over the first ten years in a given field focuses on the impact one's choice of undergraduate school can make. The salary-based ranking was created by Burning Glass, a nonprofit that researches employment trends, and is based on data about experience and pay from Lightcast, a labor-market data firm, and Glassdoor, which rates companies.

In simple terms, graduates from schools ranked on the list "earn higher pay than the median graduate in software development." 

"Where you go matters," says Matt Sigelman, president of Burning Glass, citing an annual premium of around $40,000 as an example. "You multiply that over a 30-year career, that's a $1.2 million difference for going to the top schools versus going to a median-earning school." 

Read the WSJ's: Top College's for High-Paying Jobs in Software on their website.

If you don't have a WSJ account, you can read the article here via a pdf.