Graduates earn a median $37,568 two years after finishing, more than 53% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 1,170 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
It pays around the middle. What you earn will depend more on where you study and what you do with it than on the subject label.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas State University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $57,318 | not published | 19 |
| 2 | Carnegie Mellon University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $57,318 | not published | 25 |
| 3 | Hamilton College cost & debt at this university → | not published | $51,273 | not published | 5 |
| 4 | Boston College | not published | $51,273 | not published | 23 |
| 5 | University of Houston cost & debt at this university → | $42,259 | $51,106 | $50,582 | 30 |
| 6 | East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania | $48,937 | $50,856 | $55,290 | 6 |
| 7 | Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College | $53,433 | $50,856 | $58,051 | 31 |
| 8 | University of Delaware cost & debt at this university → | $46,748 | $50,856 | not published | 19 |
| 9 | Western Michigan University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $49,683 | not published | 5 |
| 10 | Worcester State University | not published | $49,644 | $56,781 | 7 |
| 11 | Clarkson University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $49,058 | not published | 8 |
| 12 | Iowa State University cost & debt at this university → | $45,450 | $49,058 | not published | 27 |
Two medians are worth separating. $37,568 is what the typical graduate earns — each programme counted in proportion to how many students it graduates. $38,289 is what the typical programme reports, counting a class of twenty the same as a class of two thousand. The weighted figure is lower here, which means the larger programmes in this field pay less than the small ones.
It is the median of what real graduates of this exact major earned, taken from tax records two years after they completed. It is not a starting salary, not an average of job adverts, and not a projection. The median bachelor's major in this dataset reports $36,497, so Chemistry sits above the middle by $1,071.
Two years is early in a career. Fields with long training pipelines — medicine, law, research — look weaker at this point than they will at ten, while trades and applied technical fields peak sooner. Read a low figure in a long-pipeline subject as "slow start", not "bad degree".
There is no debt figure here on purpose. The Department of Education publishes earnings by field of study but not borrowing, so nobody can honestly tell you the debt of a specific major. Debt is published per institution — that is where our university cost pages carry it.
Whatever the subject pays, the money you do not borrow is the money you keep.
Tell us what you need and we will come back with the lenders that actually fund students from your country — including options with no US co-signer. No obligation, and we never charge you.
Source: US Department of Education College Scorecard, field-of-study earnings (median earnings of graduates who received federal financial aid, measured 1–3 years after completion). Figures are per major and credential level, pooled across US programmes. Information only, not financial advice.