Penn ranked No.1 among the nation’s top schools for its impact on graduates’ salaries, according to the 2024 Wall Street Journal/College Pulse ranking.
According to the Journal's ranking, Penn adds $84,761 in value to graduates’ salaries, with a score of 99 in salary impact compared to similar colleges. Princeton was ranked second in terms of salary outcomes, with a value added of $82,433, followed by Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University.
The ranking arranged schools based on their influence on the earnings of alumni and how this connects to the expenses associated with attending the institution. Penn’s average net price, based on the average amount students pay each year after financial aid and scholarships, was $14,851. The ranking estimated that it would it would take a Penn student eight months to pay off the average net price.
Though Penn had the highest impact on graduates’ salaries, its average net price compared to Princeton's $11,080 suggests that Penn is also more expensive to attend than similar schools.
The 2024 Best Colleges in the U.S. ranking, which emphasizes student outcomes like graduation rates and graduate salaries, ranked Penn seventh overall, with Princeton University at the top of the list.
Instead of comparing schools’ resources, this ranking focuses on the outcome of each university’s graduates relative to what students were likely to achieve regardless of where they studied. In other words, colleges were ranked based on their likelihood to improve students’ outcomes rather than their raw performance.
Student outcomes, such as graduation rates and graduate salary, contributed to 70% of each college’s score, with the remaining score based on learning environment weighted at 20% and diversity weighted at 10%.
Penn scored 64 for its learning opportunities, which was based on a survey of college students and alumni. Penn’s lowest score of 63 on the list was for diversity, measured in terms of the racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and disability status composition of the student body and faculty.
In 2022, Penn ranked first among colleges with the most alumni on the Forbes 400 list, according to a Forbes report. The 17 people on the list included four members of the Lauder family, the COO and president of Blackstone Inc., and 1997 College and Wharton graduate Elon Musk.
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