Median Starting Salaries (by Institution): Materials Engineering
Salary (by major) data was collected from the U.S. Department of Education’s (USDOE) College Scorecard platform and indicates the median salary of an institution’s graduates five years after receiving their bachelor’s degree in materials engineering, along with the number of graduates per institution for which the USDOE has salary data. Since the USDOE focuses only on early-career salaries, we limit the salary tables on our Dataverse to “pre-professional” majors where students are more likely to pursue employment immediately after graduation (e.g., as opposed to attending graduate school) and within their undergraduate field of study.
*Note that the USDOE is not able to disclose salary data by major for all institutions offering a major in this area. For example, if a group of individuals within a certain institution is too small, the USDOE must suppress salary data in order to prevent identification of the group’s individuals.
Table Updated March 2026
| Institution | # Graduates | Median Starting Salary | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 190415 | Cornell University | 28 | $107,760 | |
| 110422 | California Poly - San Luis Obispo | 41 | $107,726 | |
| 212054 | Drexel University | 27 | $99,089 | |
| 236948 | University of Washington-Seattle Campus | 41 | $98,760 | UW |
| 215062 | University of Pennsylvania | 14 | $98,625 | UPenn |
| 166683 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 24 | $98,069 | MIT |
| 145637 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | 68 | $96,928 | UIUC |
| 171100 | Michigan State University | 28 | $95,671 | MSU |
| 170976 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor | 53 | $95,471 | UMich |
| 204796 | Ohio State University | 73 | $92,120 | OSU |
| 233921 | Virginia Tech | 66 | $90,734 | Virginia Tech; Va Tech |
| 174066 | University of Minnesota-Twin Cities | 39 | $89,696 | UMN |
| 139755 | Georgia Institute of Technology | 55 | $89,572 | Georgia Tech |
| 100663 | University of Alabama at Birmingham | 15 | $88,034 | |
| 153603 | Iowa State University | 42 | $87,838 | ISU |
| 129020 | University of Connecticut | 38 | $86,829 | UConn |
| 134130 | University of Florida | 61 | $86,081 | UF |
| 240444 | University of Wisconsin-Madison | 35 | $85,207 | UW Madison |
| 194824 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | 25 | $84,117 | RPI |
| 175272 | Winona State University | 20 | $83,187 | |
| 217882 | Clemson University | 44 | $82,276 | |
| 171128 | Michigan Technological University | 23 | $81,891 | |
| 213543 | Lehigh University | 23 | N/A (suppressed) | |
| 243780 | Purdue University | 44 | N/A (suppressed) | |
| 104151 | Arizona State University Campus Immersion | 37 | N/A (suppressed) | ASU |
| 163286 | University of Maryland-College Park | 34 | N/A (suppressed) | UMD |
| 227216 | University of North Texas | 24 | N/A (suppressed) | UNT |
| 147767 | Northwestern University | 17 | N/A (suppressed) | |
| 199193 | North Carolina State University | 31 | N/A (suppressed) | NC State; NCSU |
| 221759 | The University of Tennessee-Knoxville | 21 | N/A (suppressed) | UTK |
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