Penn graduates join the workforce in stronger financial position than peers from most other universities — but not all majors are created equal.
The Daily Pennsylvanian analyzed federal earnings data alongside Penn Career Services’ annual post-graduate outcomes reports to compare starting salaries across undergraduate majors. The federal data, analyzed by the HEA Group and released last December, follows a new Department of Education rule for colleges that participate in federal student loan programs.
Penn’s Computer and Information Sciences program was the fourth-highest earning program in the country with $241,380 in median earnings four years after graduation. The Wharton School’s finance concentration ranked 17th overall and first among undergraduate finance programs.
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Several other majors and concentrations at the University were also industry leaders. The average earnings of a Penn philosophy major were $107,454, which led all programs nationwide. Both the College of Arts and Science’s history and cognitive science majors rank top 10 in the country, and Wharton’s marketing concentration came in at second.
The HEA Group analyzed earnings from the 2017-18 and 2018-19 academic years. According to the data, just 804 out of 32,578 undergraduate-level programs — or 2.47% — are at risk of failing the Education Department’s earnings benchmark. All 24 Penn programs for which data were available cleared the bar, with median earnings four years after graduation exceeding the national benchmark of $34,808 for high school graduates.
The DP also examined earnings reported by Penn’s Class of 2025, the latest class for which Career Services has published post-graduate data. The analysis included median starting salaries for 50 undergraduate programs and mean starting salaries for 45.
Penn currently offers 87 majors and concentrations across its four undergraduate schools. The DP was unable to collect median salary data for programs with two or fewer graduates and mean salary data for programs with three or fewer.
Graduates of the Networked and Social Systems Engineering program obtained the highest starting salaries of any Penn major, with a median of $195,000 and a mean of $180,833 across six reports. Computer Science ranked second in both categories, with a median starting salary of $140,000 and a mean of $157,337.
In both median and mean salaries, all 15 lowest-earning majors were from the College of Arts and Sciences. Majors from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences had the four highest median salaries and three highest mean salaries.
In every year since 2019, the Engineering School produced graduates with the highest median and mean starting salaries. In 2025, Engineering School graduates had a median starting salary of $122,500, followed by the Wharton School at $110,000, the College at $88,000, and the School of Nursing at $85,280.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the real median personal income in the United States is $46,960, and the mean personal income is $70,390.
The response rate for the Class of 2025 survey was 54%, according to Career Services. The knowledge rate — which includes both survey respondents and outcomes found through other sources — was 74%, with 1,938 total outcomes known.
Jack Guerin leads data reporting and can be reached at guerin@thedp.com. At Penn, he studies philosophy, politics, and economics. Follow him on X @JackGuerin_.