What if I'd picked the other one?
Pick your major and the one you almost chose instead — see the national median pay gap between them, held flat over however many years you want to look at.
Business Administration, Management and Operations vs Computer Science · 30 years
$1,162,560
$38,752 a year apart, held flat for 30 years.
The middle 50% overlap: Business Administration, Management and Operations runs $47,618–$93,584, Computer Science runs $74,830–$152,038. Plenty of Business Administration, Management and Operations graduates out-earn plenty of Computer Science graduates. A major shifts the odds — it doesn't set your salary.
How it works
Pick two bachelor's majors. The calculator looks up each major's national median earnings — measured 4 years after graduating, among graduates working and not enrolled in further study — and multiplies the difference by the number of years you choose.
One thing to hold onto while you read the number: these are earnings for graduates who received federal student aid — roughly six in ten graduates of four-year colleges. That's how the federal data is built, from student aid records, and the Department of Education says plainly that it shouldn't be read as representing every graduate of a field. It's the best national data that exists on this question, and it still isn't everyone.
The result is a "held flat" projection, not a lifetime-earnings forecast: it assumes the same annual gap every year, with no raises, promotions, inflation, taxes, or career changes factored in. It's a way to put a size on the gap between two fields, not a prediction of your future income.
Alongside the gap, the calculator always shows the middle 50% (25th–75th percentile) range for both majors. When those ranges overlap — which they often do — plenty of graduates in the "lower" major out-earn plenty of graduates in the "higher" one. A major shifts the odds; it doesn't set your salary.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the earnings data come from?
- The U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard — Field of Study data. Figures are the Department’s own national medians for graduates working and not enrolled 4 years after completing a bachelor’s degree, not re-aggregated by us.
- Do these numbers cover every graduate?
- No — and this is the most important limit to know. College Scorecard earnings come from federal student aid records, so they only count graduates who received Title IV federal financial aid. The Department’s own documentation says data users “should not assume that Scorecard data values are representative of all students who graduated from a particular field of study.” In 2015–16, 54.5% of all U.S. undergraduates received federal aid — but that figure includes two-year colleges, which don’t grant bachelor’s degrees. At the four-year colleges that do, the rate was higher: 59.8% public, 64.4% private, 77.7% for-profit, or roughly six in ten overall. So think of these as the medians of most bachelor’s graduates, not all of them. The rate also varies by school type, so two majors with different school mixes aren’t measured on exactly the same slice.
- How recent are these earnings?
- They are a snapshot, not a live figure. The cohort is students who graduated in 2017–18 and 2018–19, with earnings measured in calendar years 2022 and 2023, reported in 2024 dollars. A field that has changed a lot since then will not show that change here.
- What does “working and not enrolled” mean?
- Within the federally aided cohort, it excludes graduates who are still in school. That means majors with high graduate-school rates — biology or psychology, for example — reflect only the graduates who went straight to work, not the ones in med school or a PhD program.
- Why is the gap held flat for N years instead of projected forward?
- The underlying data is a single snapshot: earnings measured 4 years after graduating. Projecting raises, promotions, inflation, or career changes over decades would require assumptions we can’t back with data, so this tool simply multiplies the measured annual gap by the number of years you choose. It sizes the gap — it doesn’t forecast your career.
- Why show the overlap between two majors?
- A median-to-median comparison on its own can make two majors look like they never cross paths — but the middle 50% (25th–75th percentile) of each major often overlaps in reality. Showing that overlap next to the gap keeps the comparison honest: a major shifts your odds, it doesn’t set your salary.