Colleges With Highest Paid Graduates 2015: SUNY Maritime, Harvey Mudd Top Rankings For Students With Steep Salaries

Where should you go to college to earn the big bucks eventually? The State University of New York Maritime College in the Bronx or Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. That's according to compensation information company PayScale, which Wednesday released its annual college salary report with those two schools topping the list.

The study looked at earnings data for alumni who attended 1,519 higher education institutions separated into categories based on their degree offerings. SUNY Maritime College came in at No. 1 for bachelor's degrees, with a median mid-career income of $134,000, followed by Harvey Mudd with $133,000. The top-ranking two year colleges included the New York City College of Technology, whose alumni earned mid-career salaries of about $72,700; the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York with about $72,100, and De Anza College in Cupertino, California, with $69,800.

These numbers were much higher than the median starting salary for graduates of the class of 2014, which the National Association of Colleges and Employers put at $48,127. The association found engineering majors made the most money right out of school, followed by business and liberal arts alumni.

The PayScale data backed this up, with 14 of its 15 highest-earning bachelor's degrees being engineering. Petroleum and nuclear engineering alumni achieved mid-career pay of about $168,000 and $121,000, respectively. But degrees like physics, mathematics, government and statistics also made the top 30.

Graduate degrees slightly departed from the trend. Petroleum engineers still made the most money, but nurse anesthesia, strategy, finance and real estate also ranked high, with mid-career salaries hovering around $150,000.

Here are PayScale's top schools when ranked by alumni salary. See the full report here.

Two-Year Colleges:

1. New York City College of Technology in New York, New York

2. Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, New York

3. De Anza College in Cupertino, California

4. Bakersfield College in Bakersfield, California

5. Alvin Community College in Alvin, Texas

Four-Year Undergraduate Colleges:

1. State University of New York Maritime College in Bronx, New York

2. Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California

3. (tie) Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts

3. (tie) United States Naval Academy in Annapolis

5. California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California

Graduate Schools:

1. Emory University School of Law in Atlanta

2. University of California at Los Angeles College of Law

3. Harvard Business School in Boston

4. Georgetown University Law Center in Washington

5. Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts