Research suggests California colleges have some of the wealthiest graduates in America

Location has always been a key factor in prospective students’ college decisions, but new data suggests that one part of the U.S. in particular reigns supreme when it comes to how much graduates are paid.

A study by the higher education research group DegreeChoices examined the most recent College Scorecard – an online tool created by the U.S. government for students and families to compare colleges – to gather the median earnings of college graduates four years after they graduated one of the 5,500 institutions included in the study.

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The findings were then aggregated by state and ranked by the highest average earnings, researchers said.

As it turns out, the wealthiest college graduates in America come from Massachusetts, where the average college-educated individual makes $59,862 in a year.

Schools like Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are regarded as some of the most academically rigorous universities in the world and have over 150 Nobel laureates between them, which could contribute to why salaries for graduates of Massachusetts institutions are so high.

Just behind Massachusetts on the list of highest-paid alumni is the state that borders them to the south: Connecticut.

“Four years after completing their degree, graduates of Connecticut colleges earned an average salary of $59,356,” DegreeChoices researchers found.

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Rounding out the top three is another East Coast state; New Jersey graduates make $58,904 per year on average, with the highest salaries going to graduates of the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken.

The first non-East Coast state to make the list is California, researchers concluded.

“According to College Scorecard data, people who graduated from a California institution earned an average salary of $58,441 four years later,” the study said. “Graduates from [Caltech] have the highest median salary of any college alumni in the entire state and across the entire country…[earning] an estimated $139,418.”

The estimated median of $139,418 is almost $80,000 more than the average annual U.S. salary, according to Forbes.

In fifth is the Golden State’s easterly neighbor Nevada where graduates of Silver State colleges took home an average yearly income of $58,376, higher than every state in the Western United States except California.

A list of the top ten states with the colleges that have the wealthiest graduates can be viewed below:

The East Coast’s domination of the top ten is expected, according to study author David Levy, but that may change as time goes on.

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“With a number of quality educational opportunities and a high cost of living compared to the South and Midwest, it remains to be seen whether institutions [in the Northeast] retain their popularity of the next few years,” Levy said. “Or, college prospects [may start] opting for more affordable regions of America.”

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